Hey Jude
by The Beatles
Thirteen vocabulary entries, the smallest English card here, and that is a feature: the value is in the grammar rather than the words. you were made is a passive, and passives are normally taught years after A1 — meeting one inside a song you have known your whole life strips away most of its strangeness. Beside it sit two comparatives, better and colder, one irregular and one regular, which is the entire comparative system in miniature. The nouns are plain and physical: song, heart, pain, shoulders, skin. Sung slowly, and the long closing section hands you the same short phrases dozens of times over. Hard to find a gentler A1- listen.
How to study this song
“Hey Jude” carries 14 English words, 7 adjectives and 8 verb forms — 29 study entries in all, graded A1+. Begin with song, heart and pain: get those and most of the lines stop being guesswork. Nothing dominates this card: 14 words against 8 verb forms, so the study time splits evenly. At this level the goal is recognition: hear a word, place it, keep going.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| EN | ES | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| song | canción | canzone | chanson | canção |
What this song teaches you
Level · A1+
- Vocabulary words
- 14
- Adjectives
- 7
- Word combos
- 11
- Expressions
- 10
- Verb forms
- 16
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
“Hey Jude” is one of the most famous songs by The Beatles, released in 1968 as the first single on their own Apple label.
Paul McCartney wrote it to comfort John Lennon’s young son Julian during his parents’ divorce — the words began as “Hey Jules” before McCartney softened the name — and it grew from a tender piano ballad into a vast, anthemic hymn of reassurance.
Its most famous feature is the long, communal “na-na-na” coda that turns the ending into a singalong anyone can join. McCartney began it in the car on the way to visit Julian Lennon, then five years old, after John Lennon left the family; the first title was “Hey Jules”.
It was recorded at Trident Studios on 31 July and 1 August 1968 and was the first Beatles song taped on eight-track equipment.
Did you know?
Running for more than seven minutes, “Hey Jude” was one of the longest songs ever to top the charts, with its fade-out coda alone lasting over four minutes.
In the United States it spent nine weeks at number one — the longest run at the top for any Beatles single — and it became one of the biggest-selling records of the 1960s, a fixture of the band’s live and televised performances.
Charts & streaming
“Hey Jude” sold millions of copies worldwide on release and topped the charts in numerous countries, becoming one of the defining hit singles of the decade. It remains one of The Beatles’ most streamed and most performed songs and a permanent fixture of the classic-rock and pop canon.
It has sold around eight million copies worldwide and is certified 4× platinum in the United States; Rolling Stone placed it eighth in its 2004 list of the greatest songs of all time.