Those Were The Days

Those Were the Days: Mary Hopkin, Paul McCartney, and the Song That Launched Apple Records

"Those Were the Days" was not merely a hit single in 1968. It was the commercial foundation on which Apple Records attempted to build a new kind of music industry, and its extraordinary success across international markets demonstrated that the Beatles' collective commercial instincts extended to their business ventures as well as their own recordings. The song's story involves a Welsh folk singer discovered on a television talent program, a melody with roots in pre-Revolutionary Russia, a production overseen by one of the most famous musicians in the world, and a chart performance that rivaled the Beatles themselves at their commercial peak.

The melody of "Those Were the Days" is adapted from a Russian folk song, "Dorogoi Dlinnoyu," which has been dated to the late nineteenth century. The song was brought to the English-speaking world by Gene Raskin, an American folk singer and playwright, who wrote English lyrics and performed it in folk clubs in London during the early 1960s. It was in these settings that the melody became known to a generation of British folk musicians, including those who would eventually bring it to the attention of Paul McCartney.

Mary Hopkin had come to McCartney's attention through a recommendation from the model Twiggy, who had seen Hopkin perform on the British talent program Opportunity Knocks. McCartney produced the recording personally, making specific decisions about arrangement and vocal treatment that shaped the final sound considerably. He surrounded Hopkin's remarkably pure and unaffected voice with a folk-tinged production that included acoustic guitars, mandolin, and other traditional instruments, creating a sound that felt simultaneously contemporary and timeless. The single was released on Apple Records in August 1968, making it one of the first major releases on the Beatles' newly founded label.

The commercial response was immediate and overwhelming. In the United Kingdom, "Those Were the Days" reached number one and held the position for six weeks, an exceptional chart run for a debut single by a new artist. The song displaced the Beatles' own "Hey Jude" from the top of the charts in some markets, a remarkable demonstration of Apple Records' capacity to compete with itself. In the United States, the single climbed to number two on the Billboard Hot 100, held from the top position but spending weeks in the upper reaches of the chart and achieving sales that made it one of the biggest international hits of the autumn of 1968.

The song's appeal transcended the usual pop demographic in ways that complicated any simple account of its success. It was not primarily a youth record, though young people certainly bought and enjoyed it. Its nostalgic subject matter, the remembering of a carefree youth and the acknowledgment that those days have passed, gave it an emotional resonance for older listeners who might not typically be purchasing pop singles. Radio programmers found that it worked across the easy listening and pop formats simultaneously, and it received airplay in markets that did not typically share much programming overlap.

Hopkin's vocal performance was the key to the record's effectiveness. She sang with a clarity and emotional directness that was striking in the context of 1968 pop, when many female vocalists were adopting more elaborate and production-heavy approaches. McCartney's production decision to let her voice stand relatively unadorned, supported but not overwhelmed by the arrangement, proved correct: the simplicity of the vocal against the carefully constructed backing created a counterpoint that was more moving than either element would have been alone. Hopkin was nineteen years old when the recording was made, and her youth gave the nostalgic lyric an additional layer of poignancy, suggesting that even the very young could feel the pull of a past that had already slipped away.

Apple Records used the success of "Those Were the Days" as evidence that the label could function as a genuine major commercial force and not merely a vanity project for the Beatles. The label's early roster included James Taylor, Jackie Lomax, and the Modern Jazz Quartet, alongside Hopkin, and the success of her debut single helped fund and sustain these more artistically ambitious signings. The label sold millions of copies of the single in markets across Europe, North America, Australia, and Asia, confirming that its distribution infrastructure was capable of competing with the established majors.

The cultural footprint of "Those Were the Days" proved durable. The song was released in multiple language versions across different markets, with Hopkin recording in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Hebrew, among others. These international recordings extended the song's reach into markets where the English version might not have been commercially viable and demonstrated Hopkin's versatility as a performer. The song became one of the best-selling singles of 1968 across multiple countries and remained a fixture of easy listening radio for years after its initial release. It is now regarded as one of the defining recordings of Apple Records' early period and one of the most successful productions of McCartney's career outside of his work with the Beatles.