Some songwriters put their hearts on the line so vividly that it’s obvious they’re expressing their innermost feelings.
ome songwriters can fake authenticity so brilliantly that you think their songs are about them and them only.
And some songwriters, much like our inexhaustible former Beatle Paul McCartney, can mask his emotions and details about his personal life so often and with such ease that the songs, you sense, are not so much about him but, well, all the other lonely people.
Throughout McCartney’s career, however, there have been songs that have touched on personal moments in his life. He has said that an unquestioning instinct drives his work.
“I once worked with Allen Ginsberg,” he revealed in an interview with NPR. “And he always used to say, ‘first thought, best thought’, and he would then edit everything. It doesn’t always work, but as a general idea, I will try and do that… Sometimes I come out with a puzzling set of words that I have no idea what I mean, yet I’ve got to make sense of it and follow the trail.”
Follow the trail is right. As McCartney celebrates his 80th birthday, the selection of songs below feature elements of a private life made cautiously public.
He isn’t what you might call a confessional songwriter — he alludes to personal topics more than points to them, but across his back catalogue, you’ll find songs that say in a few choice words what many other songwriters would take a career to express.
1. Things We Said Today (A Hard Day’s Night, 1964)
Written in the summer of 1964 on a yacht whilst on holiday in the Virgin Islands with his then-girlfriend Jane Asher, McCartney admitted the song foreshadowed troubled times ahead between them. “The song projects itself into the future and then is nostalgic about the moment we’re living in now.”
2. For No One (Revolver, 1966)
Video of the Day
Originally titled Why Did It Die?, McCartney wrote this in the bathroom of a rented chalet whilst on a skiing holiday in Klosters, Switzerland, with Asher. “I suspect it was about another argument,”
McCartney said of one of his most poignant tunes and one that convincingly details the end of a relationship. Even John Lennon (who, along with George Harrison, did not contribute to the recording of the song) was impressed: “One of my favourites of his — a nice piece of work.”
3. Every Night (McCartney, 1970)
Every Night was first performed as part of The Beatles’ Get Back sessions in January 1969, but ended up on his debut solo album as the song that highlighted his discontent at the band’s imminent demise. ‘Every night I just want to go out, get out of my head…’ is the song’s opening line, the context explained later by McCartney: “You’ve gotta imagine having your three best mates suddenly be against you. And, yeah, I must admit, I hit the bottle, I hit substances. It was a very difficult period for me.”
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In writing Every Night, Paul recounts what it was like losing his three best mates
4. Maybe I’m Amazed (McCartney, 1970)
“The song isn’t the conventional way of presenting a relationship,” admitted McCartney of Maybe I’m Amazed, “or of some of the contradictions that can arise from being in love.” It’s the song he says he “would like to be remembered for in the future”.
McCartney had good reason to say this, as it is regarded as an early solo career triumph (Rolling Stone magazine called it “a simple, immaculate love song”). Written whilst still a member of The Beatles, the song is, despite its cautious title, a perceptive look at how much adrift he felt from the collective creativity of his friends and how much he relied on his wife, Linda (whom he married in the summer of 1969), for her advice and support.
5. Two Of Us (Let it Be, 1970)
As the decades have passed, more people believe this song to be about Paul and Linda than Paul and John. One of McCartney’s most gentle tunes, its purity hinges on the uncomplicated notion of driving in the English countryside and getting lost (‘you and me, Sunday driving, not arriving, on our way back home…’).
Linda said the song is about “one of those days out… We just pulled off in a wood somewhere and parked the car. I went off walking while Paul sat in the car and started writing”.
6. Another Day (Ram, 1971)
Written while still a member of The Beatles (it was first performed in 1969 during the group’s recording sessions for Let It Be), Another Day is a conscious attempt at defining a sonic template that wouldn’t be compared to that of the Fab Four.
McCartney was on a hiding to nothing (Wings drummer Denny Seiwell described the song as “Eleanor Rigby in New York”), but the difference here is the songwriting credits are attributed to “Mr and Mrs McCartney”. John Lennon scathingly referenced the song in 1971’s How Do You Sleep?: ‘The only thing you done was Yesterday and since you’ve gone you’re just another day.’
7. Heart Of The Country (Ram, 1971)
Predating Mull Of Kintyre by several years, and following The Beatles’ split in 1970, this unsophisticated acoustic song references McCartney’s search for peace in the Scottish countryside, specifically Kintyre’s High Peak Farm (which he purchased in 1965 on the advice of Jane Asher). ‘Want a horse,’ he sings, ‘I want a sheep, I wanna get me a good night’s sleep.’
8. Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey (Ram, 1971)
McCartney rarely explicitly references real people by name in his work, but this micro-medley song (his first post-Beatles No1 single and one that showcased his melodic compositional skills to great effect) is influenced by Albert Kendall, who married his father’s sister, Milly.
McCartney said it was written to symbolise the older members of his family and how different a post-World War II life was to younger people. “I was basically saying, ‘I’m so sorry I don’t live up there anymore, and I’ve got a completely different lifestyle to all you guys. I’m sorry, Uncle Albert!’”
9. Too Many People (Ram, 1971)
Most B-sides tend to go unnoticed, but Too Many People, the B-side to Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey didn’t, especially to John Lennon, to whom the song’s barbed lyrics were directed. McCartney’s bitter tone was influenced by what he viewed as Lennon and Yoko Ono’s politically-oriented preaching. “It got up my nose a little bit,” he said. Lennon disapproved: “There were all the bits at the beginning. Like ‘too many people going underground’. Well, that was us, Yoko and me.”
10. Give Ireland Back To The Irish (Single, 1972)
This song was written in response to Bloody Sunday, the incident in Derry on January 30, 1972, when 13 people were killed by the British Army.
In what seems to have been a sincere knee-jerk reaction, he wrote the song on January 31 and recorded it the following day. Within hours of recording, he received a phone call from the Chairman of EMI telling him the label wouldn’t release it. McCartney wouldn’t accept the decision.
Despite the blanket ban across television and radio in the UK, the song reached the Top 20 (and No1 in the Irish charts). The song, he said, understating it somewhat, “wasn’t an easy route”.
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Here Today is dedicated to his friendship with John Lennon. Photo: AP/Apple Corps
11. Hi, Hi, Hi (Single, 1972)
It isn’t often that nice-guy McCartney lets loose with admissions of his (then) sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, but he achieved it with Hi, Hi, Hi, which was banned by the BBC for its drug references (the song title) and sexually suggestive lyrics (including ‘Yes, I go like a rabbit, gonna grab it, gonna do it ’til the night is done…’).
In later years, he was quite ambivalent towards it: “Hi, Hi, Hi was a song of the times. As anyone knows about that period, drugs were fairly widespread. Looking back on it now, I have a completely different perspective, but at the time, it seemed to us that everyone was doing it.”
12. Mull Of Kintyre (Single, 1977)
One of McCartney’s most divisive if bestselling songs (it topped the UK singles charts for nine weeks) is also one of his most heartfelt — the Scottish peninsula of Kintyre allowed him to embrace the kind of seclusion he had never experienced throughout most of the 60s.
Along with fellow Wings member Denny Laine, McCartney completed the song that he had first started to write in 1974. “It was a love song, really, about how I enjoyed being there… and wanting to get back there,” he said. The refrain of the song was played at Linda’s funeral in June 1998.
13. Waterfalls (McCartney II, 1980)
The title of one of McCartney’s most underrated ballads directly references another one of his domestic retreats — Waterfalls was the name of a compact two-bedroom cottage that he and Linda bought in 1974 for £40,000. The Sussex property comprised 160 acres of farmland and was populated with an array of farm animals and domestic pets. The song and its accompanying video reference McCartney’s then (and lifelong) dedication to nature.
14. Here Today (Tug of War, 1982)
Few songs are so personal to McCartney as the string-quartet-driven ballad Here Today, which he wrote as a touching tribute to his friendship with Lennon. Written less than a year after Lennon’s murder, McCartney structures the song around a theoretical conversation between the pair, balancing the loss of a close friend with the solace that creating the song gave him.
“The song is me trying to talk back to him,” said McCartney, “but realising the futility of it because he is no longer here, even though that’s a fact I can’t quite believe, even to this day.”
15. Beautiful Night (Flaming Pie, 1997)
Taken out of the album’s context, Beautiful Night featured McCartney, with drums/vocals by Ringo Starr and a string arrangement by George Martin. Had a version of The Beatles reformed? No, but the personal connections highlighted just how much murky waters had passed under the bridge for such a re-teaming (abetted in no small way by McCartney and Starr collaborating on The Beatles Anthology songs Real Love and Free As A Bird).
Beautiful Night had been hanging around for almost 10 years, he said, but the chemistry remained intact: “It was really like the old days… I realised that we hadn’t done this for so long, but it was very comfortable. And it was still there.”
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Paul wrote Try Not To Cry about wife Linda’s death. Photo: AP
16. Try Not To Cry (Run Devil Run, 1999)
Released one year after the death of Linda, Try Not To Cry (one of three original songs on this back-to-basics rock ’n’ roll covers album) recounts a widower’s grief and emotional pain that are, perhaps wisely, counterbalanced by a rock ’n’ roll urgency. The song, said McCartney, was the culmination of “a whole year of letting any emotion come sweeping over me — and it did”.
17. About You/Heather (Driving Rain, 2001)
Two songs about his second wife, Heather Mills, appear on Driving Rain, and together they pinpoint where McCartney is with her in his life. About You (‘you give me power to get out of bed’) was written whilst on holiday in Goa, India, at the start of 2001, while the rather self-explanatory Heather (‘the queen of my heart – Heather’) captures all too knowingly the spark of romance that McCartney is once again experiencing.
18. Too Much Rain (Chaos And Creation In The Backyard, 2005)
A rare (relatively) contemporary McCartney song that was partly inspired by his second wife, Heather, who he separated from in 2006.
“I know I was thinking of my missus, Heather, who’s had lots of rough times in her life, and the chorus just sort of says, ‘It’s not right in one life, too much rain’,” said McCartney. The song also alludes to the melancholy brought about by the deaths of Linda, his mother, Lennon and George Harrison.
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Paul wrote a few songs for Heather Mills. Photo: Reuters/Dan Chung
19. Early Days (2013, New)
Recorded at the age of 69, Early Days sees McCartney think back to when he and Lennon were two aspiring teenage musicians in Liverpool (‘dressed in black from head to toe, two guitars across our backs… hair slicked back with Vaseline, like the pictures on the wall’), visiting record shops where they would listen to newly imported rock ’n’ roll records from the US.
“I started to get images of us in the record shop,” recalled McCartney of this gorgeous, simplistic acoustic song, “looking at the posters and the joy that gave me remembering all those moments”.
20. I Don’t Know (Egypt Station, 2018)
‘I got crows at my window, dogs at my door, I don’t think I can take anymore, what am I doing wrong…’ On the way towards his 80th year, McCartney writes a piano ballad that takes a long, hard look at himself (the context of which was brought about by an incident he references, but doesn’t go into in any great detail).
“I’m a grandfather, a father, a husband,” he said, “and in that package, there’s no guarantee that every minute’s gonna go right. In fact, quite the opposite. I have a great life, but from time to time, reality intrudes. This was one of those occasions.”
