"Hey Jude" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon-McCartney. The ballad evolved from "Hey Jules", a song McCartney wrote to comfort John Lennon's son, Julian, during his parents' divorce. "Hey Jude" begins with a verse-bridge structure incorporating McCartney's vocal performance and piano accompaniment; further instrumentation is added as the song progresses. After the fourth verse, the song shifts to a fade-out coda that lasts for more than four minutes. "
Critical reception
Upon the single's release, Derek Johnson of the NME wrote: "The intriguing features of 'Hey Jude' are its extreme length and the 40-piece orchestral accompaniment - and personally I would have preferred it without either!" While he viewed the track overall as "a beautiful, compelling song", and the first three minutes as "absolutely sensational", Johnson rued the long coda's "vocal improvisations on the basically repetitive four-bar chorus". Time magazine described the coda as "a fadeout that engagingly spoofs the fadeout as a gimmick for ending pop records". The same reviewer contrasted "Hey Jude" with its B-side, "Revolution", saying that "The other side of the new disk urges activism of a different sort", due to McCartney "liltingly exhort[ing] a friend to overcome his fears and commit himself in love". Rolling Stone also attributed the song's meaning as a message from McCartney to Lennon to end his negative relationships with women: "to break the old pattern; to really go through with love". Other commentators interpreted "Hey Jude" as being directed at Bob Dylan, then semi-retired in Woodstock.  Writing in 1971, Robert Christgau of The Village Voice called it "one of [McCartney's] truest and most forthright love songs" and was critical of its omission from the album The Beatles. In their 1975 book The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, critics Roy Carr and Tony Tyler wrote that "Hey Jude" "promised great things" for the ill-conceived Apple enterprise and described the song as "the last great Beatles single recorded specifically for the 45s market". They noted also that "the epic proportions of the piece" encouraged many imitators, yet these other artists "[failed] to capture the gentleness and sympathy of the Beatles' communal feel".  Among more recent commentators, Alan Pollack admires "Hey Jude" as "such a good illustration of two compositional lessons - how to fill a large canvas with simple means, and how to use diverse elements such as harmony, bassline, and orchestration to articulate form and contrast." Pollack considers that the song's long coda provides "an astonishingly transcendental effect", while AllMusic's Richie Unterberger similarly opines: "What could have very easily been boring is instead hypnotic because McCartney varies the vocal with some of the greatest nonsense scatting ever heard in rock ..." In his book Revolution in the Head, Ian MacDonald wrote that the "pseudo-soul shrieking in the fade-out may be a blemish" but he praised the song as "a pop/rock hybrid drawing on the best of both idioms". MacDonald concluded: "'Hey Jude' strikes a universal note, touching on an archetypal moment in male sexual psychology with a gentle wisdom one might properly call inspired." Lennon said the song was "one of [McCartney's] masterpieces".

Q: When originally released what did the critics say?
A: The intriguing features of 'Hey Jude' are its extreme length and the 40-piece orchestral accompaniment - and personally I would have preferred it without either!"

Q: Who wrote the negative review?
A: Derek Johnson of the NME

Q: Did anyone else write negative reviews?
A: Time magazine described the coda as "a fadeout that engagingly spoofs the fadeout as a gimmick for ending pop records".
Who else did not like the song?
unknown
unknown