Paul McCartney has enough songs now that you’d think he’d be confident with his output, but you’d be wrong. Even the best doubt themselves.
When you look throughout Paul McCartney’s career, regardless of whether that means him playing in The Beatles, as a solo artist, with Wings or while collaborating with others, great music and an innovative way with rhythm follows him like a shadow. So many of what we consider the greatest songs of all time are attached to him, as despite only ever playing around with the simplest concepts of music, he has still come up with incredibly thought-provoking, joyous and heartfelt songs.
Graham Nash put it best when he spoke about the versatility McCartney (and the rest of The Beatles for that matter) managed to achieve. “Their incredible simplicity and their incredible melodic structure is stunning to this day,” he said. “With all due respect, within this western scale of music, there’s what? Twelve notes? Are you kidding me? The Beatles were unbelievable, and I think we all knew it.”
Look through the interviews of all musical legends and praise for The Beatles isn’t going to be too far away. The band inspired other artists far and wide with their innovative sound and reluctance to ever hold back on their creativity.
The band members only ever expanded on that creativity when they split and pursued their solo careers. One of the biggest points of contention throughout the band was their differing opinions in what made good music towards the end of their run. As such, when they split, it meant that George Harrison could release the music he received pushback on, John Lennon could write more honest music, and Paul McCartney could pursue creating great pop songs.
Of course, while McCartney not having anyone to answer to should have resulted in him creating his most ambitious work, his first offering as a solo artist was somewhat unrealised. He felt worried, so much so he was reluctant to push himself too much, and as a result, his first effort as a solo artist, aptly called McCartney, felt somewhat anticlimactic.
“When The Beatles had broken up and I was on my own for the first time, I got that four track Studa in my living room,” he recalled, “And just kind of started making up songs and stuff, and it was a very bare album.”
Of course, McCartney eventually stepped comfortably into his sound. When working on his own and with Wings, he was comfortable coming up with more great songs like he was used to. He’s at the point now when he looks back on music and remembers how he felt while writing it, while acknowledging how he feels now, looking back on it. Some songs bring him immense pride; meanwhile, there are others where he felt as though he took a bit too much of a risk.
This was the case with his track ‘My Love’, which he liked but was also worried he might have overdone. “I remember being particularly scared of ‘My Love’,” he recalled, “Which was a sort of zany thing, but it’s alright now.”
It wasn’t just this song he had fears over, there are plenty from his discography that stopped him in his tracks. “There were a couple where I thought, ‘Oh my God, they’ve over-made me up. I wanted to look natural and I look like someone out of vaudeville’,” he said, “But even that stuff looks alright. It’s got a sort of vintage quality to it that seems to work. It’s like an old snapshot album; you’re looking at yourself from many years ago. I think it has quite a warm quality in the end. A lot of the stuff stands up.”