Raw Meat is a quoteblog by Aaron Swartz.

Hey Jude

Everyone seems to insist Hey Jude is about (broken) love of some sort. And the first paragraph certainly seems to suggest this. But this really flounders on the last real verse: “You’re waiting for someone to perform with / And don’t you know that it’s just you … / The movement you need is on your shoulder.”

If you replace “her” with “it” the song suddenly starts making a lot more sense. It’s a comforting song to a boy who’s seen some great injustice, exhorting him not to become inured to it (“making the world a little colder) but to “let it under his skin … let it into his heart” so that he “can start to make it better.”

And he doesn’t need to wait for a movement — he can start by himself: “it’s just you, hey Jude, you’ll do / the movement you need is on your shoulder.”