Question: Among best Beatles songs what rank does Rolling Stone place "Hey Jude"?
About the article "Hey Jude", section "Critical reception".

Candidate passages:
Upon the release of the "Hey Jude" single, "Time" contrasted it with its B-side "Revolution."
"Time" wrote, "The other side of the new disk urges activism of a different sort" due to McCartney "liltingly exhorta friend to overcome his fears and commit himself in love."
Robert Christgau of "The Village Voice" called it "one of his truest and most forthright love songs" and was critical of its omission from "The Beatles".
Music analyst Alan Pollack praised "Hey Jude," saying, "it's such a good illustration of two compositional lessons—how to fill a large canvas with simple means, and how to use diverse elements such as harmony, bassline, and orchestration to articulate form and contrast."
He also said it is unusual for a long song because it uses a "binary form that combines a fully developed, hymn-like song together with an extended, mantra-like jam on a simple chord progression."
Pollack described the song's long coda and fadeout as "an astonishingly transcendental effect," while Unterberger observed, "What could have very easily been boring is instead hypnotic".
John Lennon said "Hey Jude" was "one of his [Paul's masterpieces.
""Hey Jude" was nominated for the Grammy Awards of 1969 in the Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal categories but failed to win any of them.
It did win the 1968 Ivor Novello Award for "A-Side With the Highest Sales".
In the 1968 "NME" Readers' Poll, "Hey Jude" was named the best single of the year.
In 2001, "Hey Jude" was inducted into the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Grammy Hall of Fame.
In 2004 and later in 2010, "Rolling Stone" ranked the song at number eight on "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time," making it the highest ranked Beatles song on the list.
Also in 2010, "Rolling Stone" ranked the song at number seven on the Beatles' 100 Greatest Songs.
It came in third on Channel 4's list of 100 Greatest Singles.
The Amusement & Music Operators Association ranked "Hey Jude" the 11th-best jukebox single of all time.
It was also voted the greatest song of all time by "Mojo" readers.
"Isn't It a Pity" remains one of Harrison's most popular songs with critics and fans alike.
AllMusic calls it "deeply moving and powerful", while in their book on the solo Beatles' recording history, "Eight Arms to Hold You", Chip Madinger and Mark Easter declare: "If any George Harrison song can be called 'majestic', 'Isn't It a Pity' would be the one."
In his December 1970 album review for the "NME", Alan Smith described it as a track that "catches the mood of aching tolerance of pain, which Harrison can do so well" and "a ballad which will stand out from the album with the passing of the years".
Simon Leng identifies the song as musically "sumptuous" and praises Harrison's melody and "unique" use of notes beyond the key signature, as well as John Barham's "evocative, suspended orchestration".
He notes also the similarity of their combined musical counterbalance with elements of Indian raga, in the number of "swaras" (tones) in both ascending and descending scales.
To Leng, "Isn't It a Pity" is the "pivotal song", the "essence" of "All Things Must Pass", encapsulating the album's struggle between "gospel ecstasy and the failure of human relationships".
He concludes: "Ever bittersweet, 'Isn't It a Pity' records the last dying echoes of the Beatles.
"Writing in the late 1970s, Nicholas Schaffner noted the song's "towering simplicity" and the "endlessly repetitive fade-out that somehow manages to be hypnotic instead of boring".
Like Leng and Schaffner, a number of commentators have remarked on the significance of "Isn't It a Pity" in the context of the Beatles' demise, starting with the song's length: 7:10 – just a second under "Hey Jude".
Ben Gerson, in his 1971 "Rolling Stone" review, described the song as a "lament ... whose beginning is the broken thirds of John's 'I Am the Walrus' and whose end is the decadent, exultant last half of Paul's 'Hey Jude'".
Peter Doggett considers "Isn't It a Pity" a "remarkably non-judgemental commentary on the disintegration of the Beatles' spirit".
Elliot Huntley has complained of the song's enforced period in hibernation: " simply beggars belief that the track was rejected by Martin, Lennon and McCartney – three men whose reputations rested on their ability to spot a good tune when they heard one."
Huntley views "Isn't It a Pity" as worthy of "fully fledged standard" status, with Barham's "soaring" strings and Harrison's "sublime" slide guitar combining to take the song "into the heavens, where it stays".
Speaking in 2001 during promotion for the 30th anniversary reissue of "All Things Must Pass", Harrison named the song among his three favourite tracks on the album, along with "Run of the Mill" and "Awaiting on You All".
In 2010, AOL Radio listeners voted "Isn't It a Pity" seventh in a poll to find the ten best post-Beatles George Harrison songs.
Both Eric Clapton and Tom Petty have named "Isn't It a Pity" among their favourite two Harrison compositions, Petty calling the song "a masterpiece". 
Music charts.US music charts.
The Beatles established four records on the Billboard Hot 100 with "Can't Buy Me Love" at number one:  Until "Billboard" began using SoundScan for their charts in 1991, it had the biggest jump to number one: (number twenty-seven to number one; no other single had ever done this).
It gave the Beatles three consecutive number-one songs ("I Want to Hold Your Hand" was replaced at number one by "She Loves You" which was in turn replaced by "Can't Buy Me Love").
The three songs spent a combined total of 14 consecutive weeks at No.
1.
This was the first time an artist had three number ones in a row.
The best prior was Elvis, who had two consecutive number ones with Don't Be Cruel & Love Me Tender.
When "Can't Buy Me Love" went to number one (4 April 1964), the entire top five of the Hot 100 was by the Beatles, the next positions being filled by "Twist and Shout", "She Loves You", "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Please Please Me," respectively.
No other act has held the top five spots simultaneously.
During its second week at number one (11 April 1964), the Beatles had fourteen songs on the Hot 100 at the same time.
"Rolling Stone" ranked "Can't Buy Me Love" at No.
289 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
The song spent five consecutive weeks at No.
1.
The only Beatles songs to exceed that mark were "I Want To Hold Your Hand" at seven weeks and "Hey Jude" at nine weeks. 
"Hey Jude" was released on 26 August 1968 in the United States and 30 August in the United Kingdom, backed with "Revolution" on the B-side of a 7" single.
The single was the debut release of the Beatles' record label Apple Records; in the US, it was also the first Beatles' single to be issued in a company sleeve rather than a picture sleeve.
Even though "Hey Jude" was recorded during the sessions for the album "The Beatles", also known as the White Album, it was always intended as a single and not an album track, although it would eventually make its LP debut two years later as the title cut on the compilation album originally titled "The Beatles Again".
Lennon wanted "Revolution" to be the A-side of the single, but the other Beatles did not agree.
In his 1970 interview with "Rolling Stone", he said "Hey Jude" was worthy of an A-side, "but we could have had both."
Ten years later in 1980, he told "Playboy" he still disagreed with the decision.
"Hey Jude" began its sixteen-week run on the British charts on 7 September 1968, claiming the top spot a week later.
It only lasted two weeks on top before being knocked off by another single from Apple, Mary Hopkin's "Those Were the Days" (a song which, incidentally, if not penned was actually produced by McCartney).
The single was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America on 13 September; that same week "NME" reported that two million copies of the single had been sold.
The song entered the US charts on 14 September 1968, where it stayed for nineteen weeks.
Two weeks later, "Hey Jude" was number one in the charts and held that position for nine weeks, the longest time spent by a Beatles' single at number one, as well as being the longest-playing single to reach number one.
The song was the 16th number one hit for the band in the US, tying Elvis Presley's record at the time for most number one songs there.
"Hey Jude" clocked in at 7:11.
The only other chart-topping song worldwide in the 1960s that ran over seven minutes was Richard Harris' "MacArthur Park".
In the UK, where "MacArthur Park" did not top the chart, "Hey Jude" remained the longest number-one hit for nearly a quarter of a century, until it was surpassed in 1993 by Meat Loaf's "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)", which ran 7:58 as a single.
On 30 November 1968, "NME" reported that sales had reached nearly six million copies worldwide.
"Hey Jude" became the biggest-selling debut release for a record label ever, selling an estimated eight million copies worldwide and topping the charts in eleven countries.
"Hey Jude" was the top Billboard Hot 100 single for 1968, according to year-end charts.
Less than three weeks after its release, the record was certified gold for sales of one million copies.
In 1999, it was certified 4x platinum, representing four million units shipped. 
Two contrasting versions of the song were recorded in London in mid 1970 during the sessions for "All Things Must Pass", both of which were intended for release, from the outset.
According to Harrison, after recording the first version, he had decided he was unhappy with it, and the second version came about by chance "weeks later", when one of the backing musicians began playing the song during a session.
The so-called "Isn't It a Pity (Version Two)" is noticeably slower than the better known, seven-minute "epic" reading of the song.
Eric Clapton's lead guitar fills, phased piano from Tony Ashton, and John Barham-arranged woodwinds dominate Version Two, which is also more in keeping with the Beatles' earlier attempts on the track; as with "Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp", it features extensive use of the Leslie speaker sound so familiar from the band's "Abbey Road" album.
Like the concurrently recorded "My Sweet Lord", the album's other "Isn't It a Pity" betrays the influence of co-producer Phil Spector more so than the comparatively sedate Version Two.
It is also the most extreme example of Harrison's stated intention to allow some of the songs on "All Things Must Pass" to run to a longer length and feature instrumentation to a greater degree than had been possible within the confines of the more pop-oriented Beatles approach to recording.
"Isn't It a Pity" (Version One, in its "All Things Must Pass" context) starts small and builds – "and it builds and it builds", "NME"s Alan Smith would soon write.
Taping of the backing track took place at Abbey Road Studios on 2 June, and judging by Spector's comments regarding Harrison's early mixes, the orchestral arrangement was not added until late August at the earliest.
The first slide-guitar break on the released recording, quite possibly overdubbed some time after the June sessions also, would adopt a near-identical melody to the one Harrison had vocalised when routining the song for the other Beatles on 26 January 1969 – reflecting a quality admired by Elton John in the latter's 2002 tribute to Harrison: "All his solos are very melodic – you can almost sing his solos."
Inglis writes that the effect of Harrison's "elaborate patterns" on slide guitar is to "counterbalance the underlying atmosphere of pessimism with shafts of beauty", similar to the "notes of light and dark" provided by Pete Drake's pedal steel on the song "All Things Must Pass".
Now in the key of G (two semitones down from the "Get Back" performance), "Isn't It a Pity" begins "dirge"-like with a two-note pedal point provided by layers of keyboards and acoustic guitars.
Only at the one-minute mark, at the start of verse two, does the rhythm section come in, after which the instruments begin to "break out of their metronomic straitjacket to attain an almost ecstatic release", as "Beatles Forever" author Nicholas Schaffner put it in 1977.
The "balmy" slide guitar passage, supported by Barham's string section, follows this second verse, and from that point on – around 2:38 – the same, circular chord structure continues for the remaining four-and-a-half minutes of the song.
The long fade-out sees what Schaffner termed the "pseudo-symphonic tension" burst into a frenzy of brass and tympani, further bottleneck soloing, and the ""What a pity"" mantra joined by "Hey Jude"-style ""Na-na-na-na"" chorus.
One of the most obvious examples of what "Rolling Stone" magazine's album reviewer later termed "the music of mountain tops and vast horizons", Harrison's former bandmate Ringo Starr and two musicians with well-established links to the Beatles, Klaus Voormann and Billy Preston, were among the participants, on drums, bass and organ, respectively.
Members of Apple band Badfinger provided the "felt but not heard" acoustic guitars (behind Harrison's), consistent with Spector's criteria for his Wall of Sound technique, while author Bruce Spizer has suggested that Peter Frampton may have been among the rhythm guitarists also.
Pianist Gary Wright, who would go on to collaborate regularly with Harrison over the subsequent decades, recalls the session for "Isn't It a Pity" as being his first with Harrison.
Bobby Whitlock, the other main keyboard player on "All Things Must Pass", with Wright, recalls playing a "phase-shifted pump organ, or harmonium" on the track.
Another possible participant is Maurice Gibb, Starr's Highgate neighbour at the time, who claimed to have played piano on the song.