When Paul McCartney sang “Hey Jude” at the opening of the 2012 summer Olympics, he unintentionally displayed the profound and humbling power of the human voice. As McCartney and his backing band fought their way through an admirable performance of a song that once set international airwaves on fire, true music aficionados, not blinded by McCartney’s legend, could not help but shake their heads discreetly.
After all, the seventy-year-old man is not the singer he once was. Were the McCartney of 1962 propelled into the future, he would have laughed, achingly, in his melodious and flat-less voice. Lennon would have made a caustic crack about Paul looking like a grandma.
