(Credits: Far Out / Robert Ellis / Ellen Jaskol / Los Angeles Times / UCLA Library)
Thu 15 January 2026 4:00, UK
It’s easy to forget that Hollywood comedian Eddie Murphy once upon a time wielded a fair amount of pop clout in the early 1990s.
It was a pivotal moment in Murphy’s career when the family fare of Mulan and The Nutty Professor’s screwball goof began to beckon. Just as the 1980s heights of his Saturday Night Live tenure, the Eddie Murphy Raw stand-up, and Beverly Hills Cop thrust him to the era’s pop-cultural zenith, so too were his budding singing efforts paying off, dropping the hooky ‘Party All the Time’ with ease.
Yet, in the next decade’s wobbly curdle, the tunes began to leave fans wanting as much as his diminishing box office returns. Murphy had good intentions. Conceiving a single to corral all of music’s big names for the one-off Yeah Foundation charity, Murphy began work on his namesake ‘Yeah’ single, backed by Motown and centred on numerous guest voices lending their one-word contributions throughout.
Murphy managed to pull in quite the glittering cast. Attached to ‘Yeah’ were everybody from Jon Bon Jovi, Garth Brooks, MC Hammer, Michael Jackson, Elton John, Patti LaBelle, Stevie Wonder, and ‘Walrus of Love’ Barry White to join in the fun, proceeds headed toward each artist’s charity of choice.
Not content with his star-studded vocal choir, Murphy tried his luck with a former Beatle. It turned out that Paul McCartney was due a little downtime during the Off the Ground sessions, so he agreed to lend his vocals to ‘Yeah’s single word number. Before long, Murphy found himself flying over to the UK’s East Sussex region to the Hogg Hill Mill studio, a converted 18th-century corn mill snapped up by McCartney in the early 1980s as his own, personal recording studio.
“We flew out, and it was the first time I saw him,” Murphy recalled on Late Night with Seth Meyers in 2024. “It was in the studio at his house, and it was surreal. You’re sitting with one of The Beatles, and he has all the equipment that they recorded The Beatles’ stuff on. So I went in his back, and he had this harpsichord-type piano thing, and he started playing ‘Strawberry Fields’, that little piano thing in the beginning. He said, ’Hey, remember this is?’” before letting off a fangirl scream, concluding his starstruck anecdote.
It’s possible that McCartney whipped out the studio’s Baldwin electric harpsichord, the same one played by George Martin on Abbey Road’s ‘Because’, backed up by George Harrison’s Moog synthesiser.
However, Fab Four fanatics will know that the opening flute notes on John Lennon’s ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ were in fact the Mk II Mellotron, McCartney in possession of the customised Sound Effects Console model purchased by EMI before its use on The Beatles double album. Whatever the case, watching the old master play that exquisite surrealist intro must have been a self-pinching moment.
‘Yeah’ would eventually open Murphy’s third LP Love’s Alright, promoted by the also Jackson featuring ‘Whatzupwitu’, a return of favours for Murphy’s appearance in Jackson’s Egyptian-themed ‘Remember the Time’ video.
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