The Beatles song too successful to be Paul McCartney’s favourite
Asking an artist to pick their favourite of their own songs is cruel. It’s like asking parents to pick a favourite child, to look at the product of their care and nurture and decide which is the best of the bunch. But with a song, there’s even more at play. There’s talent, skill, and the personal context that will forever linger around the art and, in Paul McCartney’s mind, even the consideration of cultural credibility.
It’s a muddied question. In the same way that anyone would look back at old work, whether it be early pieces of art from your younger years or even the things you did when you were still honing a certain skill, being forced to reflect on things you’ve made is a mindfield. Hopefully, it’s mostly a pleasant one. Looking back is a great way to see how far you’ve come and how much better you’ve got over time. But for Paul McCartney, with hundreds upon hundreds of songs paving the long and winding road of his career (sorry), it’s impossible to be objective.
Because it’s not an objective answer, so many things come into question about what’s the best, or what someone’s favourite song is. McCartney is merely brave enough to admit that, as he’s honest with the fact that the matter of how publicly beloved a track is makes a difference to him.
“I think ‘Yesterday’—if it wasn’t so successful—might be my favourite,” he said, teasing the 1965 track with the top spot. “You get that thing when something is just so successful… people often don’t want to do ‘the big one’ that everyone wants them to do. They kind of shy away from it,” he explained, talking about the curse of the hit that so many other artists feel.
When a song blows up, the demand to hear it must become overwhelming for the artist. It must become hard to hold onto your own personal love for the song when you’re playing it on repeat and it’s all anyone wants from you. It’s a sad fact, especially in this case, given the song’s history as a track that came to McCartney in a dream in a way that he often assigned to the memory and spirit of his late mother, helping his career out. But by a song’s thousandth replay, no amount of personal connection to it could save the exhaustion.
However, the song that McCartney assigns to the top spot also has a tender story attached. “I’m often asked what my favourite song I’ve ever written is and I don’t ever really want to answer it,” McCartney told Paul Muldoon, “But when pushed I’d go to ‘Here, There And Everywhere’.” Picked from Revolver, it’s not just a track that McCartney thinks it well-made, but it connects to a sweet moment between him and Lennon.
“I remember John saying, ‘You know, I probably like that better than any of my songs on the tape.’ Coming from John, that was high praise indeed,” McCartney recalled of the moment he played Lennon the demo. And with that special memory, the song has forever stuck in his mind as a favourite. Without the strain of being a big hit, it’s been allowed to stay there, unharmed in the top spot.
So for McCartney’s definitive top two ranking, he said, “‘Here, There and Everywhere’ with ‘Yesterday’ as a close second,” though ‘Yesterday’ was merely slandered by its own celebrity.
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