The songwriters Paul McCartney called the best on the planet: “My favourite”
No one can really argue that Paul McCartney has notched his way up to being one of the greatest songwriters of his generation.
Even if not everything that he’s made has been solid gold or anything, the fact that he has written as many Beatles classics as he has and has continued his hot streak all the way up to The Boys of Dungeon Lane can only come from someone who’s constantly trying to find out what new sound is lingering around the corner. He was always searching for the next great hook every time he played, but he felt that some composers were miles better than he would ever be.
But the fact that Macca was able to write a lot of his greatest melodies without any proper musical training is really a miracle at this point. No one could have imagined someone could have made something as sophisticated as ‘Eleanor Rigby’ without some knowledge of music theory, but a lot of McCartney’s greatest melodies have always been about following his ear every time he had an idea.
Granted, that did also come with years of experience listening to anything and everything he could get his hands on. He was never a snob when it came to different kinds of music, and while he was the epitome of what a rock and roller singer should sound like on tunes like ‘Long Tall Sally’, he was never afraid to get a little bit sentimental every single time he wrote one of his ballads.
The Fab Four were no strangers to downtempo material, but McCartney was usually the one getting the most eyerolls. He seemed to be the only one in the band with a certain reverence for the kind of tunes that his parents grew up listening to, and while he may have seemed wildly out of touch a few times when suggesting that they play songs like ‘Til There was You’, it’s not like he ever lost the love for that kind of music when he eventually made records like Kisses on the Bottom.
He was more than happy to collaborate with professional studio musicians to bring songs like ‘My Valentine’ to life, and a lot of the covers that he performed on the record are actually far more complicated than most people give them credit for. A standards record is usually considered a vanity project for any pop singer, but McCartney knew that it was no joke trying to recreate what geniuses like the Gershwin brothers and Cole Porter were doing.
Their brand of pop was about making everything sound refined, and McCartney couldn’t think of a single songwriter better than them, saying, “People will often say, ‘What songs do you like? Who are your favourite composers?’ And I say Cole Porter, the Gershwin brothers and people like that, because the songs are very skilled. ‘Cheek To Cheek’ was always one of my favourite songs, I love the way it returns to its opening.”
Adding, “It’s a simple little trick, but as a writer, I always loved that. And someone pointed out to me that I kind of did that in ‘Here, There And Everywhere’. So all these influences were definitely in a lot of what we did in The Beatles.”
And despite his bandmates barely tolerating these kinds of songs, it’s not like McCartney wasn’t influential in his own way. There were plenty of people willing to wear their classic influences on their sleeve, and while it was embarrassing for someone like a Beatle to sing those tunes back in the day, it’s much easier to hear what someone like Lady Gaga sounds like today when she’s trying her hand at singing classic pop tunes.
Because as much as people like to point and laugh at how retro some of those tunes were, the fact that they have endured over all these years is about more than sheer luck. Those songs were the sound of the American Songbook getting written for the first time, and the rest of the world was only going to follow in the footsteps of what someone like Porter did on those original tunes.
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