“It says a lot in a line”: the 1966 lyric that underpins Paul McCartney’s proudest Beatles song
By this point, Paul McCartney’s talent with a pen will come as a surprise to no one.
The Liverpudlian lyricist has topped lists of the greatest songwriters of all time for decades now, and his place in the top spot is hard to dispute. Throughout his years with The Beatles, McCartney wrote some of the most enduring songs of all time, crafting melodies that remain catchy 60 years on and penning lyrics that still resonate to this day.
From “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away…” to “When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me…”, McCartney’s writings have consistently carved out a place for themselves in the heart of humanity. They thrived in their simplicity, in McCartney’s ability to distil human emotions and experiences down to their purest form, captivating the masses in the process.
When you hear a great lyric, it’s never a shock to find out that McCartney was the songwriter who spawned it. Yet, you can also find yourself shocked by a shoddy lyric and find that McCartney was behind that, too.
Over the years, McCartney has often admitted that occasionally erudite lyrics have come second to a succinct melody. It’s not that he undermined their importance – after all, Bob Dylan is his “idol” – but when you’re releasing songs at breakneck speed, something has to fall by the wayside every now and then. By the same token, this liberated flow also threw up a smattering of gems that he didn’t expect either.
The former Beatles bassist did once manage to surprise himself with his own lyrical talents, and it produced a song he still adores. In the mid-1960s, he penned a song called ‘Here, There and Everywhere’, which would appear on the Fab Four’s iconic seventh record, Revolver. The track soon became a favourite of McCartney’s.
In an episode of the podcast McCartney: A Life in Lyrics, the Beatle admitted that, while he finds it hard to pick out a favourite from all of his songs, ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ would be his choice, “if pushed.” His love for the song seemed to stem particularly from the mastery of its lyrical composition, with each line rolling seamlessly into the next.
“Here, making each day of the year, changing my life with the wave of her hand,” McCartney sings while gorgeous harmonies and gentle twangs surround his words, “Nobody can deny that there’s something there.” McCartney compared the structure of his lyrics to ‘Cheek to Cheek’, which Fred Astaire sang in the 1930s.
McCartney admired the way the track “resolves up its own tail” and noted that someone had once told him he does the same thing in ‘Here, There and Everywhere’. “Attractive stuff often does that,” he added, “It often comes back to where it began, and there’s a little glee at arriving there.” McCartney achieved that same glee with the Revolver track, impressing even himself in the process.
“It’s not as if we’ve gone around in a circle,” he continued to explain, “It’s more magical than that. We’ve come to another beginning of the path. It’s not just like we’ve run in a circle and just come back to the beginning; that’s quite boring. It’s this trick where you’re suddenly where you were, but it’s surprising.”
McCartney picked out the line, “Changing my life with a wave of her hand,” as a favourite, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a line that shows off the best of McCartney’s lyricism, an undeniably beautiful and meaningful image, and yet so simple and accessible. “I look at those kind of lyrics and think, ‘Where did that come from?’ It says a lot in a line,” McCartney added.
‘Here, There and Everywhere’ is certainly one of McCartney’s best writings, largely because of its lyrics. They’re sweet and loving but also well thought out beyond their emotional power, cyclical and intentional.
More than anything, the lyrics capture the quiet way love reorganises a person’s world. There are no grand declarations or sweeping gestures. Instead, McCartney focuses on the subtle shifts in perception that occur when someone becomes the centre of your emotional universe. At the time, this was an utterly sincere expression as the Fab Four steadily began to settle down in their own ways after a spell of utter chaos.
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