“Minimum everything”: The Paul McCartney Beatles song that thrived on its simplicity
The name Paul McCartney sits at the top of almost every list of the greatest songwriters of all time, and for good reason. The Liverpudlian lyricist drove the success of The Beatles in the 1960s, working alongside his songwriting partner, John Lennon, to forge some of the most beloved compositions in music history. He penned enduring tracks like ‘Let It Be’ and ‘Hey Jude’, tracks that still retain relevance even today.
Most songwriters could spend their entire careers trying to reach the creative and critical heights of McCartney without ever coming close. But for McCartney, it seems that the art of great songwriting often came easy. After ‘Yesterday’ came to him in a dream, he scribbled the song down so that he wouldn’t forget it. Decades later, it’s one of the most frequently covered compositions in music history.
A natural-born songwriter, McCartney could crank out great songs with minimal effort, a talent he once acknowledged while talking about a particular track from Rubber Soul. In Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, the songwriter explained how the half-French, half-English love song ‘Michelle’ came about, admitting that it required very little effort on the Beatles’ part.
“Michelle, ma belle,” McCartney sings over soft harmonies and a quaint guitar riff “These are words that go together well.” The song devolves into repeated declarations of, “I love you,” and French phrasing, each line detailing his love for the title character. “I love you, I love you, I love you, that’s all I want to say, until I find a way, I will say the only words I know that you’’ understand.”
It’s a fairly simple track, lyrically and instrumentally, focused on conveying that emotion of love in its simplest form. And neither McCartney nor his bandmates felt the need to jazz it up any more. “We never remixed it for dance, we never did a funky mix,” McCartney, “That was the end of it and it’s still around.”
“It’s still a popular song,” he added, “still clocking up numbers on the little tachometer or whatever it is they’ve got: four million broadcast performances.” A cute, quaint little Beatles love song had captivated the masses once more despite its fairly simple lyrics and minimal instrumentation. Even McCartney admitted that the song took little effort to create.
“Minimum effort, minimum expense, minimum everything,” McCartney shrugged. The tune didn’t require any remixing or added funk, it thrived in that minimalism, in the slightly silly but undeniably heartfelt lyrics and warm instrumentation. It was another example of McCartney’s ease with songwriting, of how he could create something so simple yet so beautiful and universal at the same time.
McCartney also suggested that budding songwriters should follow in this direction, prioritising simplicity and great songwriting over anything else. “It’s lovely,” he stated, “absolutely the best way to do it. I advise young groups these days, write ‘em great, rehearse them up so you know ‘em, have a good relationship between yourselves and go in and record them the simplest possible way that you can, mix it that day and have done with it.”
Many songwriters have certainly tried to follow in his footsteps, to distill songwriting down to its simplest form, to pen straightforward but stellar compositions. Few have achieved this feat as consistently or successfully as McCartney did. His minimal approach to the medium gave us some of the most enduring songs of all time, resonating with each generation due to their simplicity.
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