The Last Hit Song The Beatles Released Before Imploding

Amidst extreme personal and professional tension, the Beatles broke up in 1970. The beginning of the end came in April of that year, when co-leader Paul McCartney released a statement announcing his exit from the Fab Four, who eventually opted to split too. The Beatles remained very active up until their demise, and strangely, even after, leaving fans with two goodbye singles. "The Long and Winding Road" hit stores in the U.S. and in the U.K. in May 1970, and this forgotten No. 1 song of the Beatles became the group's 20th and last chart-topper. However, the final smash the Beatles made and issued while they were intact was a different No. 1 hit: the commanding and moving piano-based power ballad "Let It Be."

Credited to both John Lennon and Paul McCartney for legal reasons but written primarily by the latter, "Let It Be" was a preview of an album of the same name. That would turn out to be the band's final studio LP, released in May 1970 after the Beatles had already called it quits. A proper final statement from the biggest band of the '60s, "Let It Be" was McCartney's act of processing the inevitable breakup.

"Let It Be," the last hit of the Beatles era, was created within, and was a response to, an increasingly tumultuous band environment. "It was a difficult time because we were heading toward the breakup," Paul McCartney wrote in "Paul McCartney: The Lyrics, 1956 to the Present." Part of the issue: John Lennon's intense relationship with Yoko Ono. "That was challenging. But it was also something we had to deal with. Unless there was a really serious problem — unless one of us said, 'I can't sing with her there' — we just had to let it be."

McCartney acquired that attitude, and the one expressed in "Let It Be," from a dream. Perhaps the most forgotten tragic detail about the life of McCartney: His mother, Mary McCartney, died after cancer surgery in October 1956; the future Beatle was 14 years old. More than a decade after her death, Paul McCartney believes, Mary McCartney paid him a visit. As the lyrics of "Let It Be" explained, he found himself in a time of trouble, and mother Mary came to him, offering a message of calm and acceptance. "In this dream, seeing my mum's beautiful, kind face and being with her in a peaceful place was very comforting," McCartney recalled. "She seemed to realize I was worried about what was going on in my life and what would happen, and she said to me, 'Everything will be all right. Let it be.'"