A complete playlist of every song Paul McCartney wrote for The Beatles
Paul McCartney is undoubtedly one of the most gifted songwriters pop music has ever known. However, it was his work within The Beatles that will likely outlast us all. Below we’ve been through all of McCartney’s songs created with the Fab Four and pulled together the complete list.
McCartney and John Lennon may have shared one of the most fruitful songwriting partnerships of all time but, in truth, the pair often worked separately before joining their workings together. Though he has been attributed to many more, we’ve got all of the songwriter’s 71 compositions in the perfect playlist.
It’s an easy claim to make when suggesting Paul McCartney is a worthy songwriter. The musician has not only been a part of the biggest band the world has ever known but also forged an incredible solo career—but his time with the Fab Four will always be most adored.
How many songs has Paul McCartney written?
During his time with the Beatles, Paul McCartney wrote 71 songs as the main composer and some of those tracks rank among some of the band’s most famous. However, Macca has written many more songs that just his Beatles hits, with Wikipedia detailing over 500 songs that Paul either wrote or co-wrote.
Tracks like ‘Blackbird’, ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Hey Jude’ are among the most covered songs in the history of music and also some of Macca’s own favourites from The Beatles’ back catalogue. “I think ‘Yesterday’—if it wasn’t so successful—might be my favourite,” he once admitted.
“But, you know, 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,” McCartney added in an interview from 1984. “‘Here, There and Everywhere’ with ‘Yesterday’ as a close second.”
Lennon was equally impressed with ‘Here, There and Everywhere’, explaining: “This was a great one of his,” as part of his famous 1980 Playboy interview: “That’s Paul’s song completely, I believe. And one of my favourite songs of the Beatles.”
McCartney himself later remarked that it “was the only song that John ever complimented me on.” He also previously cited ‘Hey Jude’ as a favourite: “That’s his best song. It started off as a song about my son Julian because Paul was going to see him. Then he turned it into ‘Hey Jude’. I always thought it was about me and Yoko but he said it was about him and his.”
Of course, they are all listed and playlisted below in chronological order, starting in 1963 and stretching until the band’s break-up. It makes for a truly remarkable playlist and more importantly a reflection of McCartney’s mammoth contribution to one of the biggest bands the earth has ever seen.
Beatles songs written by Paul McCartney:
- ‘Love Me Do’
- ‘P.S. I Love You’
- ‘I Saw Her Standing There’
- ‘Hold Me Tight’
- ‘All My Loving’
- ‘Can´t Buy Me Love’
- ‘And I Love Her’
- ‘Things We Said Today’
- ‘Every Little Thing’
- ‘What You´re Doing’
- ‘Eight Days a Week’
- ‘I’ll Follow the Sun’
- ‘She’s A Woman’
- ‘Another Girl’
- ‘The Night Before’
- ‘Tell Me What You See’
- ‘I’m Down’
- ‘I´ve Just Seen a Face’
- ‘Paperback Writer’
- ‘Yesterday’
- ‘Drive My Car’
- ‘I’m Looking Through You’
- ‘Michelle’
- ‘You Won’t See Me’
- ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’
- ‘Eleanor Rigby’
- ‘For No One’
- ‘Yellow Submarine’
- ‘Good Day Sunshine’
- ‘Here, There and Everywhere’
- ‘Penny Lane’
- ‘Hello, Goodbye’
- ‘When I’m 64’
- ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’
- ‘Fixing a Hole’
- ‘Lovely Rita’
- ‘Getting Better’
- ‘She’s Leaving Home’
- ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’
- ‘Sgt. Pepper´s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)’
- ‘Magical Mystery Tour’
- ‘Your Mother Should Know’
- ‘The Fool on the HIll’
- ‘Blackbird’
- ‘Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da’
- ‘Helter Skelter’
- ‘Mother Nature’s Son’
- ‘Rocky Raccoon’
- ‘Wild Honey Pie’
- ‘Back in the USSR’
- ‘Lady Madonna’
- ‘Hey Jude’
- ‘I Will’
- ‘Birthday’
- ‘Honey Pie’
- ‘Martha My Dear’
- ‘Why Don´t We Do It in the Road?’
- ‘All Together Now’
- ‘Oh! Darling’
- ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’
- ‘Her Majesty’
- ‘Golden Slumbers’
- ‘Carry That Weight’
- ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’
- ‘The End’
- ‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window’
- ‘Get Back’
- ‘Two of us’
- ‘Let It Be’
- ‘The Long and Winding Road’
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