The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1997. Although it was nominated for Song of the Year at the 1966 Grammy Awards, it lost out to Tony Bennett's "The Shadow of Your Smile". "Yesterday" was nominated for six Grammys in total that year, and "Help!" was also nominated in four categories. After the band had failed to win any of the ten awards, Alan Livingston, the head of Capitol Records, officially protested about the results, saying that "Yesterday" being passed over for the Song of the Year "makes a mockery of the whole event".