Paul McCartney is a brilliant composer with an almost unequalled gift for melody. He has written music in a wide variety of forms and genres, including ballads, rock, music hall/vaudeville, children’s music, electronic music and classical. His best known compositions include “I Saw Her Standing There”, “Can’t Buy Me Love”, “And I Love Her”, “Yesterday”, “Michelle”, “Paperback Writer”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “Here, There and Everywhere”, “Yellow Submarine”, “For No One”, “Penny Lane”, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, “Hey Jude”, “Back in the USSR”, “Blackbird”, “Helter Skelter”, “Get Back”, “Let It Be”, “The Long and Winding Road”, “Maybe I’m Amazed”, “Live and Let Die”, “Band on the Run”, “Jet”, “Listen to What the Man Said”, “Mull of Kintyre” (with Denny Laine), “Ebony and Ivory” and many more, not to mention his numerous collaborations with John Lennon. He also had a great gift for arranging, coming up with many inventive touches to improve songs he recorded with the Beatles and afterwards. His primary instrument with the Beatles was the bass, and he is widely regarded as the one of the most influential bass players ever. He is also a talented guitar player, performing solo acoustic guitar numbers like “Yesterday” and “Blackbird” and occasionally playing lead guitar as well. He was the most proficient keyboard player in the band, and played piano and organ on numerous songs. He also played drums on several Beatles songs, such as “Back in the USSR” and “The Ballad of John and Yoko”. On several of his solo albums such as McCartney and Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, he played all the instruments. As far Paul's contributions to the Beatles go, it's worth noting that other than performing, arranging, and writing songs, Paul came up with several key ideas on how to put their albums together, most notably the concept behind Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the medley on the second side of Abbey Road. Going further back, since Paul was the first to start writing songs, he inspired John to start doing so as well, and so in a sense he had a role in all that John wrote.
Despite the high regard in which he is generally held, there is still a tendency in some quarters to denigrate McCartney and his accomplishments in favor of his former bandmate and songwriting partner John Lennon. While no one can legitimately claim to be a Beatles fan without liking at least a considerable amount of Paul’s enormous contributions to the group, it is John who gets idolized and who is often seen as the heart and soul of the band. While there is no question that John was a genius and the Beatles wouldn’t have been the greatest popular music group in history without him, Paul was every bit as important to the group and deserves just as much credit for everything that made the Beatles great. While John was the founder of the group and its public leader in the early years, Paul was in many ways the band’s musical leader, due to his attention to detail and his acute musical sensibility, and he took a more prominent leadership role in the band’s later years, when John started to lose interest. If it weren’t for Paul pushing the others, great albums like Abbey Road would never have been made. In fact, long-time Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick, in talking about John and Paul's different leadership roles, apparently said that he had always seen Paul as the true leader of the group, at least when it came to music.
The usual stereotype is that Paul wrote melodic ballads and John wrote edgy rock and roll. It is true that Paul wrote a lot more ballads than John, and that John wrote more of the harder songs. But as John himself once pointed out, this stereotype was exaggerated. Paul wrote songs like “Yesterday”, “Michelle”, “Here, There and Everywhere”, “Hey Jude” and “Let It Be”, but he also wrote “I’m Down”, “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road”, “Helter Skelter”, “Get Back” and “Oh Darling”. Also, while John did write more of the most obviously experimental tracks, Paul often played a major role in their recording. For instance, on John’s “Tomorrow Never Knows”, it was Paul who took the lead in putting together the tape loops used on the song. His Mellotron intro to “Strawberry Fields Forever” is a key part of the song. On “A Day in the Life”, aside from writing the middle section of the song, it was Paul’s idea to use an orchestra to bridge the gap between John’s parts and his, and to have it “go crazy”. So even when the song was John’s, Paul often had a lot to do with making it sound the way it did.
In fact, John once complained that he thought Paul sometimes would subconsciously try to sabotage his songs. As he put it, the group would “spend hours doing little detailed cleaning-ups of Paul’s songs; when it came to mine…this atmosphere of looseness and casualness and experimentation would creep in.” Aside from the ironic fact that John now often gets a lot of praise from the “experimentation” he complained about, this statement says less about any real effort by Paul to sabotage John’s work than it does about their wildly different approaches to recording their songs. As George Martin once explained, when John brought in a song, he would usually just give some vague idea about the sort of sound he wanted. Paul, on the other hand, often had very precise ideas about what he wanted every instrument to play (in this respect he was much like Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys leader who was in many ways Paul’s musical twin – Wilson was born two days after McCartney, he also played bass and keyboards, and he had a similar talent for composing and arranging). For instance, not only did Paul decide he wanted a piccolo trumpet on “Penny Lane”, he came up with the notes it would play, with Martin simply transcribing them. This meticulous approach sometimes led to conflict, as he often would dictate to George Harrison and Ringo Starr exactly what he wanted them to play, which they occasionally resented. But while he may have occasionally been lacking in tact in doing his arrangements, it’s hard to argue with results, and in his case they were often impressive indeed.
One example of the sometimes negative attitude some people take towards Paul is the criticism he received (spearheaded by Yoko Ono, but parroted by a number of critics and fans) for reversing the credits on his Back in the US live album, listing them as being written by “Paul McCartney and John Lennon” rather than the usual “Lennon and McCartney”. But the songs in question were all songs that Paul was the primary or sole writer of, so it was perfectly logical to put his name first – in fact, on songs like “Yesterday”, John’s name really shouldn’t be there at all, as he had nothing to do with it (as he was the first to acknowledge). And as Paul pointed out, not only had he reversed the credits for Beatles songs of his that were included on 1976’s Wings Over America without John (or Yoko) making any complaint, a few of the Beatles’ early songs also had “McCartney-Lennon” credits. Frankly, no one with any rational sense should have joined Yoko in criticizing Paul for taking primary credit for his own songs, but thanks in part to the fact that he was murdered, John is viewed as a martyr and almost a god, while Paul, despite all his obvious achievements, is stuck in his shadow (see also this article on the credit flap).
I should point out again that in emphasizing Paul’s contributions, it is not my intention to belittle John’s equally great work. My main point is just that Paul was just as much of a genius as John was, and so deserves equal respect. I know I’m not the only one to feel this way. I recall reading a comment from Peter Gabriel that he was reluctant to participate in a recording (or perhaps it was a concert) in tribute to John Lennon, not because he didn’t love Lennon’s music – he once covered “Strawberry Fields Forever” – but because he felt there was a tendency to praise John to the detriment of Paul, and he disagreed with that (unfortunately I can’t remember where I saw this comment, so I can’t provide a proper citation to back up my memory of it). For that matter, there is really no reason for fans to choose one over the other – there’s no reason not to like both equally. Also, despite the tendency of many to think that John and Paul hated each other after the Beatles broke up, in fact despite some nasty comments (from John particularly) in the media in the early 1970s, their relationship was actually fairly amicable, if sometimes distant, for the rest of John’s life, and they even hung out together a number of times in the middle of the decade (I’ve come to the conclusion that many people actually prefer to see conflicts between former bandmates, so they imagine them even when they don’t exist). Paul and John were sometimes rivals, but they were usually friendly ones, and there is no need to debate unanswerable questions like which one was greater than the other.
Paul’s one obvious weakness as a songwriter is his lyrics. He wrote a lot of very good lyrics, both with the Beatles and afterwards, but he has always been erratic as a lyricist, as some of his lyrics are awkward or just plain awful. This weakness was a little less obvious with the Beatles, as John would tell him when he thought his lyrics were crap, and often either he or Paul himself would come up with something better. But occasionally some poor lines got through, and once Paul went solo, there was no one to tell him when his lyrics needed serious rewriting. Unfortunately, in quite a few cases during his career a bad set of lyrics has ruined an otherwise good song. But in most cases Paul’s gift for melody can make up for mediocre lyrics, and when he does write a good lyric, the result is usually a great song.
Below I have listed 50 of Paul’s best songs with the Beatles (actually this is most of them, and even the few I left out are pretty good). While John helped a little on some of these, all of them were primarily (and in many cases entirely) by Paul. I didn’t include songs that the two are generally believed to have made equal contributions to, such as “She Loves You”, or even those where Paul was the main writer but John’s contribution was fairly substantial, like “We Can Work It Out” and “Getting Better”. I did include “Eleanor Rigby” despite John’s claim to have written much of the lyrics, as several other accounts say he contributed little, and I also included “With a Little Help From My Friends”, despite some sources crediting equal to John and Paul, as John was quoted on several occasions as saying it was mostly Paul’s song. I considered highlighting 20 or 25 of my particular favorites among these songs, but while there are some that I would definitely put in any such list, it was still too hard to narrow it down; perhaps next year I'll make another attempt. Here is a list by someone else. Needless to say, my list would be somewhat different, but I can appreciate his introductory statement that his own list would be different each time he did it; the same is true for me, which is why I am reluctant to put one in writing, as if it represented my definitive choices.
In addition, I have listed several of Paul’s best solo albums (I treated Wings albums as solo albums). Though what I have written above is focused on Paul’s work with the Beatles, this does not mean I agree with those who dismiss his solo career. On the contrary, I think Paul wrote a lot of great stuff after the Beatles broke up, including some songs that are comparable to the best of his songs with the Beatles. It is true that he was rather inconsistent, as most of his solo albums had songs that were obvious filler or were even downright bad. But by the same token, all of his albums had at least a few good songs, and most had a few great ones. In fact, if you compare his solo work with that of the other Beatles, not only did he have far more good songs in total, which might be expected considering that he was far more prolific and is still alive and releasing music, but his ratio of good songs to mediocre ones was comparable to John’s, probably a little better than George’s and much better than Ringo’s. If I had the time, I could easily come up with a list of Paul’s best solo songs that would be as lengthy as that of his best Beatles work, but it would take me quite a bit of time to choose from among the many good songs on his last half dozen or so solo albums (all of his albums since Flaming Pie have been pretty good). Of his solo songs from the seventies and eighties, there are also a lot of great ones, but among those that deserve special mention are “Maybe I’m Amazed”, “Every Night”, “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”, “Too Many People”, “Live and Let Die”, “Helen Wheels”, “Band on the Run”, “Jet”, “Venus and Mars/Rockshow”, “Listen to What the Man Said”, “Mull of Kintyre” (co-written by Denny Laine), “Tug of War”, “Wanderlust”, “My Brave Face” (co-written by Declan MacManus [Elvis Costello]) and “This One”. For a few samples of his later albums (all worth hearing in their entirety), check out "Beautiful Night", "Run Devil Run", "Riding Into Jaipur", "Fine Line", "Ever Present Past", "Sing the Changes" and "My Valentine"
Paul McCartney with the Beatles
I Saw Her Standing There
All My Loving
Can’t Buy Me Love
And I Love Her
I'll Follow the Sun
I’m Down
The Night Before
I’ve Just Seen a Face
Yesterday
Drive My Car
You Won’t See Me
Michelle
I'm Looking Through You
Paperback Writer
Eleanor Rigby
Here, There and Everywhere
Yellow Submarine
Good Day Sunshine
For No One
Got to Get You into My Life
Penny Lane
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
With a Little Help from My Friends
Fixing a Hole
She’s Leaving Home
When I’m 64
Lovely Rita
Magical Mystery Tour
Fool on the Hill
Hello Goodbye
Lady Madonna
Hey Jude
Back in the USSR
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Blackbird
Why Don’t We Do It in the Road
Martha My Dear
I Will
Mother Nature's Son
Helter Skelter
Honey Pie
Get Back
Let It Be
The Long and Winding Road
Oh Darling
You Never Give Me Your Money
She Came In Through the Bathroom Window
Golden Slumbers
Carry That Weight
The End
Honorable Mentions: Love Me Do, Things We Said Today, Eight Days a Week, Another Girl, Tell Me What You See, Rocky Raccoon, Birthday, Two of Us, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
Paul McCartney’s Best Post-Beatles Studio Albums
McCartney
Ram
Band on the Run
Venus and Mars
Tug of War
Flowers in the Dirt
Flaming Pie
Run Devil Run
Chaos and Creation in the Backyard
Electric Arguments
Honorable Mentions: Red Rose Speedway, London Town, Driving Rain, Memory Almost Full
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