How The Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’ Compares to The Monkees’ Rip-Off ‘I Wanna Be Free’
The Monkees‘ “I Wanna Be Free” is strikingly similar to The Beatles’ “Yesterday.” That was no accident. One song has a more universal meeting than the other but they’re both great.
The Monkees’ ‘I Wanna Be Free’ has strings like The Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart were regular songwriters for The Monkees under the name Boyce & Hart. In his 2015 book Psychedelic Bubble Gum: Boyce & Hart, The Monkees, and Turning Mayhem Into Miracles, Hart discussed the origin of “I Wanna Be Free.” “Tommy looked up at me and sang me his first lines with an original melody, ‘I wanna be free, don’t say ‘You love me’ say ‘You like me.’
“He said ‘I don’t know where to go next,'” Hart wrote. “‘It’s cool,’ I said, but it sounds more like a second verse to me. Maybe we should try to paint some pictures first like: ‘I wanna be free like the bluebird flying by me, like the waves out on the blue sea.’ Together we hammered out, ‘If your love has to tie me, don’t try me, say ‘Goodbye.'”
Hart said writing “I Wanna Be Free” paid off. “Conveniently, the song was already in our drawer when we went looking for a romantic song for Davy’s beach scene in The Monkees pilot show,” he said. “And once again, it served us well when we needed a ‘Yesterday’-type string quartet ballad for their first album. It has probably been recorded by more artists than any other Boyce & Hart song.”
The Beatles’ tune is for the brokenhearted while The Monkees’ song is more sexual
“Yesterday” and “I Wanna Be Free” have a lot of similarities. They’re both slow, baroque ballads that make gorgeous use of strings. Paul McCartney and Davy Jones both made the right decision to sing the tracks as delicately as possible.
However, the lyrics of the two songs differ wildly. “Yesterday” is about a universal emotion: wanting someone back after they left you. “I Wanna Be Free,” on the other hand, is about someone who doesn’t want to be tied down by his lover. It’s a very 1960s sentiment, so much so that there haven’t been too many songs with the same message since then.
Why we need both ‘Yesterday’ and ‘I Wanna Be Free’
The Beatles’ “Yesterday” is undeniably a classic. Over the past 50 years, it’s probably shown up on every list of the best songs ever made. Everyone credits it as one of The Beatles’ best ballads, Paul’s greatest compositions, and one of the finest tear-jerkers ever to climb the Billboard Hot 100.
But “I Wanna Be Free” deserves more love. Maybe it’s not relatable to everyone, but plenty of people with messy love lives will get what the Prefab Four were going for. It’s simple, complicated, romantic, unromantic, and authentically youthful. It stands the test of time as one of The Monkees’ best tunes.
The Beatles’ “Yesterday” and The Monkees’ “I Wanna Be Free” are similar but they’re each great in their own way.
