Sir Paul McCartney, 84, has lived a life that’s full of music, from listening to his father James play dancehall songs on the piano as a child, to joining a skiffle group with John Lennon as a teenager, to becoming the biggest band of all time with The Beatles. Then, he forged a solo career as a member of Wings and under his own name that has yielded more number-one hits than any other songwriter.
McCartney’s music has been a cornerstone of pop culture for over 60 years, but what are the songs that formed his musical taste? Paul recently revealed the ten songs that have “soundtracked my life” to the BBC’s Vernon Kay on his show Tracks Of My Years, which premieres on May 25 on BBC Sounds and iPlayer.
The full episode has since aired, revealing the stories behind each of Paul’s 10 song choices.
Counting down his top 10 picks
John Lennon – “Imagine”
In 1971, a year after the breakup of The Beatles, John Lennon released what would become his signature song, a wistful (and slightly acerbic) plea for humanity to envision a world without religion, war, or possessions, and to live in harmony. “When we came to not writing together, I think it was difficult for both of us,” McCartney once said of Lennon. “But, y’know, he still did ‘Imagine.’ He still did one of his best things ever.”
McCartney has routinely played songs written primarily by Lennon in concert, including “A Day in the Life,” “Give Peace a Chance,” and “Help!”, but he won’t touch “Imagine.” “There’s no shame in doing [Lennon’s] songs,” McCartney said. “In fact, I considered doing a major tribute to John…But then people started saying, ‘Why don’t you do ‘Imagine?” And I thought, ‘F***ing hell, Diana Ross does ‘Imagine’.’ They all do ‘Imagine’. That’s when I backed off the whole thing.”
The Beach Boys – “God Only Knows”
“God Only Knows,” written by Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys and Tony Asher, appeared on the band’s 1966 masterpiece Pet Sounds and is often cited by McCartney as one of his favorites. “I just think it’s a great song—melody, harmonies, words, you know,” Paul said. “I love it, you know. …It’s my favorite Beach Boys song.”
“Brian Wilson sort of proved himself to be like a really amazing composer,” McCartney added. “And I was into chords and harmonies and stuff at that time, and we ended up [in] kind of like a rivalry. [The Beatles would] put a song out and Brian [would] hear it, and then he’d do one, which is nice. [It was] like me and John [Lennon]. You know, you’d kind of try and top each other all the time.”
Bob Dylan – “Mr. Tambourine Man”
Released in 1965 on Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home, an album that merged his earlier folk sound with his growing interest in rock ‘n roll, “Tambourine Man” is one of his first songs to introduce psychedelic imagery. It’s often believed the song is about a drug dealer, but the tambourine man in the story may actually be Bruce Langhorne, a session guitarist, who brought a giant Turkish drum to a session.
McCartney recently ribbed Dylan for not playing the song in his live set. “I’ve been to see a couple of shows of Bob’s, and I couldn’t tell what the song was that he was doing,” McCartney said, according to Music Radar. “Now, that’s a bit much because, I mean, I know his stuff and, you know, I get it if he doesn’t want to do ‘Mr Tambourine Man,’ you know, maybe he’s fed up with that, but I would like to hear it. And I’ve paid.”
Prince – “Kiss”
The Purple One had a big hit in 1986 with this cheeky, minimalist funk track about how he doesn’t care if a woman is “rich” or “cool”; he just wants her “extra time” and her “kiss.” The song topped the charts, beating out number two, “Manic Monday” by The Bangles, which was also written by Prince.
In 2016, shortly after Prince’s death, McCartney snuck Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” into his set while performing in his hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Turns out he loves 80s synth-pop
The Human League – “Don’t You Want Me”
“You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar….” the song begins, and you either quickly change the station or roll up the car windows and scream, “Don’t you want me, baby? Don’t you want me, Oooooooooooh.” Evidently, McCarney is a roll-up-the-windows-and-belt-it-out kinda guy. Who knew?
The Kinks – “You Really Got Me”
In 1964, The Kinks released a monster with their third single, “You Really Got Me,” which, with its revolutionary distorted guitar sound, helped spark the rock era and served as a blueprint for heavy metal and punk. The song was released at the peak of Beatlemania, and both bands shared several bills in their early years, but didn’t really hit it off. “Paul McCartney was one of the most competitive people I’ve ever met. Lennon wasn’t. He just thought everyone else was sh*t,” Kinks’ frontman, Ray Davies, recalled.
Elvis Presley – “All Shook Up”
It’s hard to understand how big an impact Elvis’s 1957 hit “All Shook Up” had on a teenage McCartney. He and his friend, Ian James, struck out trying to meet girls at a fairgrounds, and he remembers going back home, and the two listened to the song to cheer themselves up. “The blues had gone. The headache had gone. We were like new people,” McCartney said, according to American Songwriter. “I just love that song so much for being able to do that. There’s just good moments like that, very reminiscent of the kind of moments you had when you were just starting a band.”
Buddy Holly – “That’ll Be The Day”
“That’ll Be the Day” has a big role in the Beatles’ history. It was routinely played by The Quarrymen, their earlier skiffle incarnation, featuring McCartney, Lennon, and George Harrison. It was also the first song they recorded as a demo in 1958 with Lennon on lead vocals. The recording would later be featured on The Beatles’ 1995 release Anthology 1.
Chuck Berry – “Maybelline”
Berry greatly influenced the Beatles’ music, especially the way he turned his songs into stories. “From the first minute we heard the great guitar intro to ‘Sweet Little Sixteen,’ we became fans of the great Chuck Berry,” McCartney said, according to Far Out. “His stories were more like poems than lyrics – the likes of ‘Johnny B Goode’ or ‘Maybellene.’”
It’s no surprise the rock ‘n roll pioneer made it to McCartney’s top 10, although many wondered why a Little Richard song wasn’t in there, too. McCartney routinely sang Little Richard songs in the early Beatles years, including a rousing version of “Long Tall Sally.”
Gene Vincent – “Be-bop-a-Lula”
“Be-bop-a-Lula” was the first record McCartney ever purchased, and it would stick with him forever. “Yeah, it was the first record I bought, you know, and in those days, I think this with the Beatles, you know, it made us realize how special it is for people to buy records because we didn’t have much money. And you think about your purchase … so precious, man. It was all your money that week would go on that record,” he recalled in an interview with Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones. “It was in the film The Girl Can’t Help It. We finally saw him sing it, you know, with the Blue Caps and stuff, so I just loved it. It’s just such a beautiful record, you know.”
His own story keeps writing itself
Fittingly, McCartney’s own story didn’t stop at ten songs from other people. Days after this list aired, his new album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, arrived on May 29, named for a real street in Liverpool’s Speke, the same working-class world he grew up in and has spent sixty years turning into music. Its standout moment, “Home to Us,” almost happened by accident: Ringo Starr laid down a drum part on a whim, McCartney heard it later and couldn’t shake it, and what came back was the first real duet between the two surviving Beatles, built on the kind of shared history that ten borrowed songs could only ever gesture toward.
In a way, that’s the whole point of a list like this. The songs McCartney chose explain who shaped him. The song he just released explains what he’s still building with what’s left of the people who shaped him back.
This article originally appeared in May. It has been updated.
