Paul McCartney’s 10 best vocal performances
Rock and roll has never run short of musical chameleons. As much as some artists find their sound and stick with it, there are just as many who want to make the strangest thing they’ve ever heard and share their weird little musical offspring with the rest of the world. Although everyone normally has a clear image in their head of which camp Paul McCartney falls under, he has warped his voice into one of the greatest instruments in rock history.
Of all The Beatles, McCartney was far more accustomed to taking on various genres whenever the time called for it. One minute, he could be playing the most raucous rock song that anyone had ever heard, and the next minute, he would be lulling you to sleep with the kind of ballad that even Burt Bacharach would kill to have written.
Despite his penchant for making syrupy muzak for many people, some of McCartney’s shining moments come when he puts his voice through its paces, either trying out different tones that he hadn’t touched on before or trying his best to take on a different character whenever he tries to sing the song, like on his traditional granny tunes.
Whether in his solo career or calling all the way back to his Fab days, McCartney has delivered a masterclass throughout his career on what can be done with the human voice in a rock context. Rock may lend itself to crashing drums and loud guitars, but there are no limits to what goes on in someone’s larynx when they turn their head to sing.
10 best Paul McCartney vocal performances:
10. ‘Long Tall Sally’ – single
In the grand scheme of Beatles lore, McCartney tends to get written out of the history books as the least rock and roll of the bunch. He could certainly play the music he loved, but it was only a matter of time before we got yet another ballad to warm our hearts and give us musical diabetes because of how sweet they were. Nothing could be further from the truth, though. McCartney could tear it up, and his take on Little Richard could put the rock and roll originator to shame.
While opening with vocals is usually a bold move right out of the gate, McCartney is absolutely fearless when going for the entire song in his trademark holler. Whereas he was scared to even raise his voice when first singing ‘Love Me Do’, Macca sounds like he’s about to split his throat in half through half of the runtime, eventually reaching some amazing screams in the back end of the song that feels like he’s having an out-of-body experience as he plays.
Given how much strain this puts on anybody’s voice, it’s a no-brainer why The Beatles used to use this song to close the show half the time. No matter how many acrobatics Macca could do, he was still human, and if you had to sing this every night and have to carry on afterwards, everything would go off the rails pretty quickly.
9. ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ – Abbey Road
For songwriting expertise alone, the back end of Abbey Road feels like a stroke of mad genius. While The Beatles never meant to do anything with these strange song fragments, the idea of putting them all together into a collage made for one of the most grandiose endings ever to be found on a rock album. The entire experience feels like a journey, but McCartney gave us a smorgasbord of singing in just a few minutes on ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’.
It’s already established that McCartney could change his voice to fit the song, but throughout every section of the song, he almost sounds like a completely different person. While we start off with the laid-back friendly version of him, we also get the grown-up barker right as he sings “out of college money spent” before eventually combining the two on the final piece of the song as he talks about one sweet dream.
‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ is far from McCartney’s greatest song, but it is one of the first ones that come to mind when thinking about the greatest showcases for his voice. This potential may have shown itself all the way back on Please Please Me, but it took years of practice before he could turn it off and back on again at the drop of a hat.
8. ‘Helter Skelter’ – The White Album
The entire process of making The White Album would have done a number on any of the band members’ voices. The whole thing is practically an anti-concept album, with everyone making their own solo outings, so going from singing a ballad you wrote yourself to screaming at the top of your lungs was always going to be a challenge. If creative differences weren’t enough to unite people, McCartney got the next best motivation by going to bat with The Who.
After Pete Townshend claimed to have made a heavy masterpiece, McCartney did him one better by coming up with ‘Helter Skelter’. Even though the ballads from McCartney far outnumber his heavier moments, this should be enough to swing everything back in the other direction, especially with the back half of the song where he’s shouting and hardly even focusing on what key he’s in.
Despite the number of metal bands who have cited a song like this as a major inspiration, McCartney never saw it like that, only looking to make something dirty and loud. John Lennon had his strange detours when making tracks like ‘Revolution 9’, but McCartney’s delve into the more raucous side of rock and roll is the much more listenable piece of work, all things considered.
7. ‘Calico Skies’ – Flaming Pie
The past few entries have all been fairly heavy, so why don’t we bring things back to Earth? For as long as McCartney has been working, his greatest strength has been in writing love songs, whether that’s something as schmaltzy as ‘My Love’ or the goofy kind like ‘You Gave Me the Answer’. All love needs a little bit of tenderness, and McCartney has never sounded more innocent than on ‘Calico Skies’.
While Flaming Pie isn’t even the best McCartney solo album by a large margin, ‘Calico Skies’ is one of the most complete songs he has ever written. Sticking with acoustic guitar in the vein of ‘Blackbird’, half of the track features McCartney’s beautiful falsetto voice, singing about how he and his lovely wife Linda were destined to be together from the moment he opened his eyes.
Compared to the crooner who sang ballads back in the day, the age in McCartney’s voice is also a welcome sound to behold, growing up into the sensible old man who loved to carry a tune whenever he got the chance. However, just because McCartney’s voice was showing signs of age didn’t mean that his heart didn’t shrink in that time. If anything, he opened his heart in this song, and the rest of us were happy to listen.
6. ‘Eleanor Rigby’ – Revolver
Not every Paul McCartney song is meant to be a pick-me-up. Sure, he’s become known as the fixture of optimism in modern music, but his ability to say what’s on his mind hasn’t been limited to strictly the bright side of life, a la Eric Idle. McCartney knows the importance of a dark song, and penning one of his most unsettling tales actually made for one of the more nuanced performances he ever gave on ‘Eleanor Rigby’.
While The Beatles slowly inched towards using string quartets for their ballads, hearing McCartney’s biting vocal tone on this song is a lot more clinical than we’re used to from him. Considering the heavy subject matter of a lonely woman who dies with no one to mourn her, McCartney’s choice to play the song as emotionless as possible is a pretty morbid creative choice, almost like he’s not even caring for this woman’s problems.
That’s because the narrator of this song isn’t meant to be a passing bystander by any stretch. This is just about how there are people in the world who will probably never find someone to be close to, and if McCartney just sings at the most clinical level, the song reads like a stark inevitability of life. No one wants that fate, so if you don’t want to end up like Ms Rigby, you’d better try to open up your heart a bit more.
5. ‘Oh Darling’ – Abbey Road
By the time McCartney began work on Abbey Road, he had a pretty good idea of how he wanted his songs to sound. If anything, the fact that he knew what he wanted from his songs was so specific that it started becoming a problem, leaving no room for anyone to improvise by the time the track got into the studio. That didn’t mean it was easygoing, and McCartney really had to work at his craft before he could holler like on ‘Oh Darling’.
If ‘Come Together’ saw Lennon adopt a bluesy cadence to his voice, McCartney delivered the kind of pop blues belter for the ages. Framed in the same way many doo-wop songs from the 1950s were played, McCartney envisioned himself singing the song as if he was delivering it in a sultry club, almost sounding like a more unhinged version of Sam Cooke in some of the more raucous parts of the song.
Given how much he put into the song, the fact that Lennon thought he could have sung it better really is a non-issue. Compared to every other song in The Beatles’ canon, this is McCartney giving a live vocal take with no inhibitions whatsoever. It can come off a bit reserved in some spots, but that’s because McCartney knew that if he pushed it any further, chances are he would be out of commission for weeks.
4. ‘Waterfalls’ – McCartney II
Out of all of McCartney’s solo output, McCartney II seems to have a world of its own. There are other albums that have a clearer focus and may even be better constructed, but where else are you going to hear songs like ‘Temporary Secretary’, ‘Bogey Music’, and ‘One of These Days’ all under one roof? McCartney looked at every song as a new opportunity, and that included bringing himself out of his vocal wheelhouse.
Although ‘Coming Up’ earns points for being one of the strangest vocal performances McCartney ever gave, ‘Waterfalls’ is one of the best examples of him making a plaintive ballad. ‘One of These Days’ works fine in closing out the album, but hearing those primitive synthesisers plodding away as McCartney talks about needing love says much more about the song than he ever intended.
To his ears, it sounded a bit half-baked, but there’s a lot more honesty in hearing the version that made it into the final mix. Talking about needing love means being incredibly vulnerable in front of someone, and since McCartney left that shaky vocal in the song, it’s like you’re in the room with him as he talks about his feelings to his other half.
3. ‘Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey’ – RAM
It’s time that most critics from back in the day give their due apology to McCartney for RAM. Upon release, critics absolutely loathed this album and were among the first to say that the ‘Cute Beatle’ had nothing left in the tank and was bound to become a relic of the past. Now that RAM is becoming known as one of the forebearers in modern indie music, ‘Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey’ could very well be McCartney’s magnum opus.
Framed like the medleys he was used to throughout his career, Macca turns different pieces of songs on their heads in this track. Much like ‘You Never Give Me Your Money,’ we get a variety of characters in McCartney’s voice as well, going from the tender-hearted voice at the very beginning of the song to the almost-comical British voice in the breakdown before harmonising with Linda on the ‘Hands across the water’ refrain.
Sure, Linda’s voice isn’t nearly as strong to match Paul’s, but what they both brought to the table made it virtually impossible for the song to be played live. It could be easier to do that kind of song now with different triggers for the live show, but in the 1970s, the idea of arranging this track for live production would give any vocal teacher fatigue just thinking about it.
2. ‘Yesterday’ – Help!
For as much shit that was thrown his way, McCartney never seemed embarrassed by his sentimental side. As far as he was concerned, love songs appealed to people for a reason, and if ‘Silly Love Songs’ was any indication, he couldn’t have cared less if someone tried to ridicule him for being heartfelt. Not all love songs are meant to be happy, and McCartney’s most poignant breakup song came complete without the rest of the other Beatles.
Even though most people wouldn’t blame me if ‘Yesterday’ was included for pure songwriting expertise, it goes a little deeper than that. Outside of the strange chord changes, the melody feels something that could have come out of an old jazz standard, with McCartney’s voice replaced by a clarinet. This was all his, though, and his tale of a man left high and dry by his woman is pure melancholy as the sad sound of a string quartet cries alongside him.
For all of the other established artists who thought that The Beatles were all hype, this is the first song that you could play to anyone to prove them wrong. McCartney certainly found a sound that worked and ran with it whenever he had the chance, but you can hear the teardrops in his voice whenever he hits those final hums at the end.
1. ‘The Back Seat of My Car’ – RAM
From the day he was born, Paul McCartney seemed to be put on this Earth to write love songs. And chances are, if your heart isn’t made of stone, you have found yourself humming at least a few of them in your head in your lifetime. While half of The Beatles’ best songs are about love, McCartney was now free from the other Beatles on RAM, and that young love led to one of the greatest teenage anthems ever put to tape.
Whereas songs like ‘Monkberry Moon Delight’ certainly have moments that call back to McCartney’s early years, ‘The Back Seat of My Car’ is the greatest teen getaway song that Bruce Springsteen never wrote. Aside from its brilliant structure, the track features McCartney pulling out all the stops with his voice, whether that’s putting on different voices on the chorus or going for broke with the vocal layering, which calls back to what Brian Wilson had done with The Beach Boys.
Despite the various vocal marvels he gave his fans throughout the years, the outro of this song might be his crowning achievement, taking his voice into different areas that no one would have dared to touch at the time. Then again, it wasn’t like the vocal highlights were over after this one song. It was just a warning that Macca could still cut loose when he wanted to, and he would spend the next 50 years doing exactly that.
