Some songs let you off easy. Hey Jude is not one of them. It hands you a tender little melody, then quietly informs you that the outro is roughly four minutes of "na-na-na" and legally binding audience participation. This time I promised myself it wouldn't be a first take — and then, in the grand tradition of my channel, played it about as badly as usual anyway.
This clip is a MelodyChords arrangement: Paul McCartney's melody and the chords stacked onto one guitar so you can play the whole thing solo, no band, no piano, no 300-person choir in the fadeout. Just you, six strings, and a coda that refuses to acknowledge the concept of an ending.
How the MelodyChords approach works on Hey Jude
Hey Jude lives in F major, and the verse is about as friendly as harmony gets: F, C, C7, F, then a warm Bb before heading home. The MelodyChords trick is to keep the sung melody on the top strings and hang the chord tones underneath it, while your thumb minds the bass note. Once you can hear the tune poking out of the top voice, the chords become the easy part — your ear already knows where they resolve.
The real nerd payoff is the coda. That endless "na-na-na" runs F – Eb – Bb – F, and that Eb is a bVII chord borrowed straight from F Mixolydian — not native to F major at all. That one flat-seven is the entire reason the outro feels like it lifts off instead of just repeating; it leans away from the key and then home again. Learn to voice that Eb cleanly with the melody on top and you've got a takeaway that works in dozens of anthemic songs, not just this one. If you like this style, my Can't Help Falling In Love arrangement uses the same one-guitar logic.
Fair warning: I still haven't figured out how to end the na-na-na section, so if you hear it drifting out of your neighbour's window at 2am, that's just me, still going. Guitar Pro files and the original videos are on Patreon — na, na na na-na-na-naaa.