The music video heads to Abbey Road Studios yesterday

I can’t quite decide if the premise of Yesterday is ridiculous or clever, but it sure looks like a good movie overall. Early buzz about Danny Boyle’s latest has been a bit muted – it premiered to lukewarm reviews in Tribeca, although it’s currently Costs on rotten tomatoes. One thing is certain: Himesh Patel’s covers of classic Beatles songs sound great. Like this cover of “Yesterday”, for example. In the video above, Patel is seen recording the song at Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles recorded almost all of their albums between 1962 and 1970.

In Yesterday, “Jack Malik (Patel) is a struggling singer-songwriter in a small English seaside town whose dreams of fame are fast fading, despite the fierce dedication and support of his childhood best friend, Ellie (Lily James) Then, after a freak bus crash during a mysterious global blackout, Jack wakes up to find The Beatles never existed… and he’s left with a very complicated problem, indeed. Perform songs from the greatest band in history to a world that has never heard them, and with a little help from his steely-hearted American agent, Debra (Kate McKinnon), Jack’s fame explodes. But as his star rises, he risks losing Ellie – the one person who ever believed in him.With the door between his old life and his new one closed, Jack will have to return to where he once belonged and prove that everything you need is love.”

There are a total of 17 Beatles songs used in the film, which is no small feat – and certainly not cheap. As Boyle said in a interview, securing the rights to the songs “made for a very heavy budget – the song costs were very expensive, a substantial part of the film’s budget. But they made a smart deal, giving us the freedom to change songs until the last minute.” How much did it cost to get all these songs? One estimate puts the cost at around $10 million.

Yesterday opens in theaters June 28.

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