![\"Paul](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Paul-McCartney-Eddie-Murphy-Split-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
(Credits: Far Out \/ Robert Ellis \/ Ellen Jaskol \/ Los Angeles Times \/ UCLA Library)<\/p>\n
Thu 15 January 2026 4:00, UK <\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to forget that Hollywood comedian Eddie Murphy<\/a> once upon a time wielded a fair amount of pop clout in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n It was a pivotal moment in Murphy\u2019s career when the family fare of Mulan and The Nutty Professor\u2019s 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\u2019s pop-cultural zenith, so too were his budding singing efforts paying off, dropping the hooky \u2018Party All the Time\u2019 with ease.<\/p>\n Yet, in the next decade\u2019s 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\u2019s big names for the one-off Yeah Foundation charity, Murphy began work on his namesake \u2018Yeah\u2019 single, backed by Motown and centred on numerous guest voices lending their one-word contributions throughout.<\/p>\n Murphy managed to pull in quite the glittering cast. Attached to \u2018Yeah\u2019 were everybody from Jon Bon Jovi, Garth Brooks, MC Hammer, Michael Jackson, Elton John, Patti LaBelle, Stevie Wonder<\/a>, and \u2018Walrus of Love\u2019 Barry White to join in the fun, proceeds headed toward each artist\u2019s charity of choice.<\/p>\n 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 \u2018Yeah\u2019s single word number. Before long, Murphy found himself flying over to the UK\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe flew out, and it was the first time I saw him,\u201d Murphy recalled on Late Night with Seth Meyers in 2024. \u201cIt was in the studio at his house, and it was surreal. You\u2019re sitting with one of The Beatles, and he has all the equipment that they recorded The Beatles\u2019 stuff on. So I went in his back, and he had this harpsichord-type piano thing, and he started playing \u2018Strawberry Fields\u2019, that little piano thing in the beginning. He said, \u2019Hey, remember this is?\u2019\u201d before letting off a fangirl scream, concluding his starstruck anecdote.<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible that McCartney whipped out the studio\u2019s Baldwin electric harpsichord, the same one played by George Martin on Abbey Road\u2019s \u2018Because\u2019, backed up by George Harrison\u2019s Moog synthesiser.<\/p>\n