The Beatles song that inspired a Kanye West hit: “I didn’t even realise”
The mark of difference between geniuses and mere mortals is often attributed to our dream states. While I lay in bed tossing and turning, imagining myself diving head-first into a melted wheel of parmesan, Paul McCartney is visited by the ghost of his mother, who places one of the greatest songs ever written in his lap.
Speaking of the iconic Beatles song ‘Let It Be’ McCartney told The Salt Lake Tribune, “I had a dream where my mother, who had been dead at that point for about ten years, came to me in the dream, and it was as if she could see that I was troubled,” he recalled. “And she sort of said to me, she said, ‘Let it be.’”
“I woke up and I remembered the dream, and I thought, ‘Well, that’s a great idea,’” he said. “And I then sat down and wrote the song using the feeling from that dream and of my mum coming to me in the dream.”
The rather simple affirmation grew into one of The Beatles’ most recognisable songs. Despite its direct connection to McCartney’s experience, it has since become a universal anthem of encouragement. But when McCartney controversially paired up with Kanye West in the studio for their 2015 hit ‘FourFiveSeconds’, he shared the story with West, sparking the genesis of another song entirely.
West, who had recently experienced a similar loss after the passing of his mother, Donda, was influenced by McCartney’s story of ‘Let It Be’ that he decided to pen a song in dedication to her. McCartney laid down some piano chords and put together the melody that would be used in West’s song ‘Only One’.
In many ways, it’s a start contrast to ‘Let It Be’, featuring a muted keyboard and autotuned vocal from West, who painfully sings of a mother comforting her son.
It’s a surprisingly muted use of McCartney’s musicianship and what many would argue is a missed opportunity to create something more grand with one of music’s greatest-ever songwriters. But it was very much the tone of West’s entire collaboration with McCartney. On ‘FourFiveSeconds’ which became the session’s biggest hit, McCartney left the studio somewhat despondent, thinking that nothing fruitful had genuinely come from the collaboration until West revealed that he had used a brief snippet of a jam session to create one of the decades biggest songs.
“We had a method in our early days of The Beatles and with Wings that I used all the way through for writing songs,” he said in an interview with DIY. “I would sit down with a guitar or at a piano and make it up and complete it. Then that’s it, you’ve done your song, and then you’re ready to roll and go in the studio”.
The method McCartney speaks of isn’t exactly veering from conventional norms. It’s generally how all songs are written—chord progressions are established, they are embellished with rhythm sections, and at some point, vocal melodies and lyrics are intertwined. This generally speaks to music being a collaborative art form that not even McCartney is above.
“With [West], it was much more made up as we went along,” McCartney explained. “So much so that I didn’t even realise that I was making songs,” he added.
It seems odd to have one of music’s all-time greatest songwriters in the room and not utilise his creative process to the fullest. In fact, it’s odd to have him in the room and largely ignore him, as West seemingly did: “We had two or three afternoons where we just hung out together,” McCartney added. “I was tootling around on guitar, and Kanye spent a lot of time just looking at pictures of Kim on his computer. I’m thinking, ‘Are we ever gonna get around to writing?!’”
“But it turns out he was writing,” he added. “That’s his muse. He was listening to this riff I was doing and obviously he knew in his mind that he could use that, so he took it, sped it up and then somehow he got Rihanna to sing on it. She’s a big favourite of mine anyway, so that just came without me lifting a finger”.
So, as I get back into bed and prepare to once more dream of a pool of parmesan, I’ve got a renewed sense of hope. I don’t have to conjure up ‘Let It Be’ in my sleep state to become the next big star, I just have to noodle a couple of chords in the presence of Kim Kardashian’s framed picture. But now I come to think of it, I think I’ll stick to the wheel of cheese.
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