Rolling Stone Readers Pick the Best Ballads of All Time

5. 'Let It Be'

The Beatles were barely functioning as a band when Paul McCartney wrote "Let It Be." It's tempting to speculate that the song is partially a message to his feuding bandmates, but that's most likely a stretch. "It has nothing to do with the Beatles," John Lennon said in 1980. "It could have been 'Wings.' I don't know what he was thinking when he wrote it. I think he was inspired by 'Bridge Over Troubled Water.'" If anything, it was the other way around. McCartney wrote the song a full year before Paul Simon wrote "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Like "Hey Jude," McCartney has played the song at almost every solo concert since he wrote it...

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