“I took a lot of my lessons from them”: The songs that taught Paul McCartney how to write
No songwriting manual tells someone how to be the greatest melodist of their generation. It takes a lot of heart for someone to even attempt to open themselves up to the world, but when they get that one song under their belt that they can admit is good, it doesn’t take them long to start following their heart and making tunes that have the power to change the world. While The Beatles have had more than their fair share of immortal anthems over the course of their career, Paul McCartney knew that there was more than intuition that brought him to where he is today.
Then again, one of the Fab Four’s biggest strengths was their ability to learn whenever they went into the studio. They never claimed to be true professionals who had everything figured out, and their ability to say yes to every strange decision led to them and George Martin creating some of the most expansive rock and roll that anyone had ever heard, whether that was tape loops on Revolver or introducing instruments like the synthesiser on Abbey Road.
When it came to their actual musical chops, though, Macca always had a penchant for being one of the masters of the catchy melody. In fact, they might have been a little bit too catchy, considering John Lennon classified his tunes as “granny shit”, but being able to write tunes that can resonate with fans of any age is hardly a bad problem to have.
Combing through every one of McCartney’s records, he’s always been interested in making something that was a little bit more peppy than the others, but that came a lot more from his background. After all, his father was the kind of jazz pianist who played the tunes that everyone wanted to hear, and that was always going to leave an enduring mark when his son eventually started writing his own tunes.
Although ‘When I’m 64’ and ‘You Gave Me The Answer’ gave a loving nod to the 1920s era of music, Macca never got to properly say thank you to those songs until making Kisses on the Bottom. He was no stranger to covers albums by the 2010s, but his turn towards making easy-listening music felt like him coming full circle from the days when he was making lighthearted romps like ‘Honey Pie’.
And when discussing those tunes, McCartney remembered that a lot of his musical upbringing his hidden somewhere within those melodies, saying, “When I kind of got into songwriting, I realized how well structured these songs were, and I think I took a lot of my lessons from them. I always thought artists like Fred Astaire were very cool. Writers like Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, all of those guys – I just thought the songs were magical. And then, as I got to be a songwriter I thought it’s beautiful, the way they made those songs.”
Granted, McCartney’s work with classical music has also primed everyone for this. An album like Working Classical showed that he had a better grasp on the listening format with his own tunes, so when he included an original like ‘My Valentine’ next to songs like ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ and ‘The Glory of Love’, that seemed to fit like a glove.
So, while a lot of what McCartney made with John Lennon marked his first steps into songwriting, it wasn’t like he was starting completely from scratch. He had a lot of these branded on his psyche, so it wasn’t out of the question for them to turn up in his own music someday.
