Yesterdays is a song composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Otto Harbach, introduced in the 1933 Broadway musical Roberta. The song was originally performed in the show by Fay Templeton in the role of Aunt Minnie, a nostalgic older woman reflecting on the passage of time and lost youth. The melody is distinguished by its haunting, minor-key character and chromatically descending harmonic movement, qualities that set it apart from the more buoyant numbers in the Roberta score and made it an irresistible vehicle for jazz interpretation. The song's brooding harmonic palette invites adventurous reharmonization, and its melody sustains emotional weight across a wide range of tempos, from languorous ballad treatments to up-tempo swing. Yesterdays appeared alongside Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and I'll Be Hard to Handle in the original production, and it was retained in the 1935 RKO film adaptation starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The composition became a staple of the jazz repertoire, with landmark recordings by Billie Holiday, Art Tatum, Artie Shaw, and countless others establishing it as one of the most frequently performed standards from the Great American Songbook. Its combination of melodic beauty, harmonic richness, and emotional depth has ensured its place as one of Kern's most admired and enduring compositions, continually attracting fresh interpretations from successive generations of musicians.
