Lennon–McCartney
Songwriting partnership between John Lennon and Paul McCartney
Lennon–McCartney is the songwriting partnership between the English musicians John Lennon (1940–1980) and Paul McCartney (born 1942) of the Beatles. It is widely considered one of the greatest, best known and most successful musical collaborations ever by records sold, with the Beatles selling over 600 million records worldwide as of 2004[ [update]]. Between 5 October 1962 and 8 May 1970, the partnership published approximately 180 jointly credited songs, of which the vast majority were recorded by the Beatles, forming the bulk of their catalogue.
Unlike many songwriting partnerships that comprise a separate lyricist and composer, such as George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Kander & Ebb or Elton John and Bernie Taupin, both Lennon and McCartney wrote lyrics and music. Sometimes, especially early on, they would collaborate extensively when writing songs, working "eyeball to eyeball" as Lennon phrased it. During the latter half of their partnership, it became more common for either of them to write most of a song on their own with minimal input from the other, and sometimes none at all. By an agreement made before the Beatles became famous, Lennon and McCartney were credited equally with songs that either one of them wrote while their partnership lasted.
Lennon–McCartney compositions have been the subject of numerous cover versions. According to "Guinness World Records", "Yesterday" has been recorded by more musicians than any other song.
Meeting.
Although McCartney had previously seen and noticed Lennon in the local area without knowing who he was, the pair first met on 6 July 1957, at a local church fête, where 16-year-old Lennon was playing with his skiffle group the Quarrymen. The 15-year-old McCartney, brought along by a mutual friend, Ivan Vaughan, impressed Lennon with his ability on the guitar and his version of Eddie Cochran's "Twenty Flight Rock". Soon afterwards, Lennon asked McCartney if he would join the Quarrymen; McCartney accepted. The duo's first musical idols were the Everly Brothers, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and they learned many of their songs and imitated their sound. Their first compositions were written at McCartney's home (20 Forthlin Road), at Lennon's aunt Mimi's house (251 Menlove Avenue), or at the Liverpool Institute. They often invited friends—including George Harrison, Nigel Walley, Barbara Baker, and Lennon's art school colleagues—to listen to performances of their new songs. The first song that Lennon and McCartney wrote together, according to Mark Lewisohn, was titled "Too Bad About Sorrows".
Writing chemistry.
Lennon said the main intention of the Beatles' music was to communicate, and that, to this effect, he and McCartney had a shared purpose. Author David Rowley points out that at least half of all Lennon–McCartney lyrics have the words "you" and/or "your" in the first line. In Lennon's 1980 "Playboy" interview, he said of the partnership:
<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />[Paul] provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes. There was a period when I thought I didn't write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock 'n' roll. But, of course, when I think of some of my own songs—"In My Life", or some of the early stuff, "This Boy"—I was writing melody with the best of them.
Historian Todd Compton has noted that there is some truth to Lennon's statement regarding McCartney's optimism. However, it does not tell the whole story, as some of McCartney's most characteristic songs are tragic, or express themes of isolation, such as "Yesterday", "She's Leaving Home", "Eleanor Rigby" or "For No One".
Although Lennon and McCartney often wrote independently—and many Beatles songs are primarily the work of one or the other—it was rare that a song would be completed without some input from both writers. In many instances, one writer would sketch an idea or a song fragment and take it to the other to finish or improve; in some cases, two incomplete songs or song ideas that each had worked on individually would be combined into a complete song. Often one of the pair would add a middle eight or bridge section to the other's verse and chorus. George Martin attributed the high quality of their songwriting to the friendly rivalry between the two.
As time went on, the songs increasingly became the work of one writer or the other, often with the partner offering up only a few words or an alternative chord. "A Day in the Life" is a well-known example of a later Beatles song that includes substantial contributions by both Lennon and McCartney, where a separate song fragment by McCartney ("Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head ...") was used to flesh out the middle of Lennon's composition ("I read the news today, oh boy ..."). "Hey Jude" is another example of a later McCartney song that had input from Lennon: while auditioning the song for Lennon, when McCartney came to the lyric "the movement you need is on your shoulder", McCartney assured Lennon that he would change the line—which McCartney felt was nonsensical—as soon as he could come up with a better lyric. Lennon advised McCartney to leave that line alone, saying it was one of the strongest in the song.
Though Lennon and McCartney's collaborative efforts decreased in later years, they continued to influence one another. As Lennon stated in 1969, "We write how we write now because of each other. Paul was there for five or ten years, and I wouldn't write like I write now if it weren't for Paul, and he wouldn't write like he does if it weren't for me."
Credit variations and disputes.
Joint credit.
When McCartney and Lennon met as teenagers and began writing songs together, they agreed that all songs written by them (whether individually or jointly) should be credited to both of them. The precise date of the agreement is unknown; however, Lennon spoke in 1980 of an informal agreement between him and McCartney made "when we were fifteen or sixteen". Two songs written (primarily by Lennon) in 1957, "Hello Little Girl" and "One After 909", were credited to the partnership when published in the following decade. The earliest Beatles recording credited to Lennon–McCartney to be officially released is "You'll Be Mine", recorded at home in 1960 and included on "Anthology 1" 35 years later.
Some other songs from the band's early years are not credited to the partnership. "In Spite of All the Danger", a 1958 song that the band (then the Quarrymen) paid to record to disc, is attributed to McCartney and George Harrison. "Cayenne", recorded at the same time as "You'll Be Mine", is a solo McCartney song. "Cry for a Shadow", an instrumental recorded during the Beatles' sessions with Tony Sheridan in June 1961 (one of the only full instrumentals the group recorded), was written by Harrison and Lennon.
By 1962, the joint credit agreement was in effect. From the time of the Beatles' A&R Decca audition in January that year, until Lennon's announcement in September 1969 that he was leaving the band, virtually all songs by McCartney or Lennon were published with joint credit, although, on a few of their first releases, the order was reversed (see below). The only other exceptions were a handful of the McCartney songs released by other musicians (viz. "Woman" by Peter and Gordon in 1966 (McCartney using Bernard Webb as a pseudonym), "Cat Call" by Chris Barber in 1967, and "Penina" by Carlos Mendes in 1969). Lennon kept the joint credit for "Give Peace a Chance", his first single with the Plastic Ono Band.
After the partnership had ended, Lennon and McCartney each gave various accounts of their individual contribution to each jointly credited song, and sometimes claimed full authorship. Often their memories of collaboration differed, and often their own early and late interviews are in conflict. In 1972, Lennon offered "Hit Parader" a list of Beatles songs with comments regarding his and McCartney's contributions to each song. In his response to the article at the time, McCartney disputed only one of Lennon's entries.
 Lennon described the song as co-written in 1965 interviews. In late interviews, he claimed full authorship. McCartney's stated help was on the "countermelody", estimating the song as "70–30" to Lennon. In 1984, McCartney said "John and I wrote it at his house in Weybridge for the film."
 In 1965, Lennon claimed that the song was "three-quarters mine and Paul changed it a bit. He said let's alter the tune." However, in 1980, Lennon said that McCartney's contribution was limited to "the way Ringo [Starr] played the drums". In "Many Years from Now", McCartney said "we sat down and wrote it together ... give him 60 percent of it."
 Lennon's entry for "In My Life" was the only one that McCartney disputed in his response to the "Hit Parader" article. Lennon said that McCartney helped only with "the middle eight" of the song. McCartney said that he wrote the entire melody, taking inspiration from Smokey Robinson songs.
 In the 1997 biography "Many Years from Now", McCartney recalled writing the music to "Eleanor Rigby" on a piano at Jane Asher's family home in Wimpole Street, and then playing it to Donovan, who supported that the song lacked any serious lyrics at that point. In 1972, Lennon said that he wrote 70 percent of the lyrics, but Pete Shotton, Lennon's childhood friend, remembered Lennon's contribution as being "absolutely nil". In 1985, McCartney said that Lennon had contributed "about half a line" to the song, but elsewhere (including a 1966 interview) he describes finishing the song with more substantial collaboration with Lennon. Harrison also contributed to this song. According to journalist Hunter Davies, the last verse was finished with all the Beatles giving suggestions in the studio.
 McCartney claimed to have helped on the lyric, estimating the song as "80–20" to Lennon. In "Hit Parader", Lennon did not acknowledge any contributions from McCartney.
 In "Hit Parader", Lennon said he authored the song and took the words from a circus poster. He did not acknowledge McCartney as a contributor. In 2013, McCartney recalled spending an afternoon with Lennon writing the song based on the poster: "I read, occasionally, people say, 'Oh, John wrote that one.' I say, 'Wait a minute, what was that afternoon I spent with him, then, looking at this poster?'"
Lennon–McCartney vs McCartney–Lennon.
In October 1962, the Beatles released their first single in the UK, "Love Me Do", credited to "Lennon–McCartney". However, on their next three releases the following year (the single "Please Please Me", the "Please Please Me" LP, and the single "From Me to You"), the credit was given as "McCartney–Lennon". According to McCartney, the decision to consistently order the credit with Lennon first was made at an April 1963 band meeting. With the "She Loves You" single, released in August 1963, the credit reverted to "Lennon–McCartney", and all subsequent official Beatles singles and albums list "Lennon–McCartney" (UK) or "John Lennon-Paul McCartney" (US) as the author of songs written by the two.
In 1976, McCartney's band Wings released their live album "Wings over America" with songwriting credits for five Beatles songs reversed to place McCartney's name first. Neither Lennon nor his wife Yoko Ono publicly objected to the flipped credits at the time.
Many years after Lennon's death however, in the late 1990s, McCartney and Ono became involved in a dispute over the credit order. McCartney's 2002 live album, "Back in the U.S.", also used the credit "Paul McCartney and John Lennon" for all of the Beatles songs. When Ono objected to McCartney's request for the reversed credit to be used for the 1965 song "Yesterday", McCartney said that he and Lennon had agreed in the past that the credits could be reversed, if either of them wanted to, on any future releases. In 2003, he relented, saying, "I'm happy with the way it is and always has been. Lennon and McCartney is still the rock 'n' roll trademark I'm proud to be a part of – in the order it has always been."
An in-depth analysis of the legal issues was the subject of a 66-page article in the "Pepperdine Law Review" in 2006.
Subsequent Paul McCartney live albums "Good Evening New York City" (2009) and "Amoeba Gig" (2019) featured original credit to Lennon-McCartney songs. The new Paul McCartney and Wings live-in-the-studio album "One Hand Clapping" (2024) featured reverted credits to the Beatles songs.
Lennon–McCartney and others.
A number of songs written primarily by the duo and recorded by the Beatles were credited as follows:
The German-language versions of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You" were also credited to additional songwriters for assisting with the translation. "Komm, gib mir deine Hand" was credited to Lennon–McCartney–Nicolas–Hellmer, and "Sie liebt dich" was credited to Lennon–McCartney–Nicolas–Montague.
Legacy.
Cultural impact.
Lennon–McCartney, as well as other British Invasion songwriters, inspired changes to the music industry because they were bands that wrote and performed their own music. This trend threatened the professional songwriters that dominated the American music industry. Ellie Greenwich, a Brill Building songwriter, said, "When the Beatles and the entire British Invasion came in, we were all ready to say, 'Look, it's been nice, there's no more room for us… It's now the self-contained group- makes, certain type of material. What do we do?" In 1963, "The Sunday Times" called Lennon and McCartney the greatest composers since Ludwig van Beethoven.
The Lennon–McCartney brand would prove to be a model for several other songwriting teams in the rock genre, including, according to Lennon, the Rolling Stones' Jagger–Richards partnership. Subsequent Beatlesque songwriting teams attracted comparisons in the media to Lennon–McCartney. The new wave band Squeeze's partnership of Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook was dubbed the "new Lennon–McCartney" by music writers. Difford and Tilbrook expressed ambivalence about the comparison: Tilbrook felt that they "got a bit pompous" as a result, while Difford noted that, although the tag was "very useful" to Squeeze for getting the attention of radio programmers, the label "might have been a burden" on Tilbrook "because he had to live up to the challenge of [the Beatles'] kind of songwriting, which he didn't need to do because he's such an incredible songwriter in his own right." "Record Mirror" pondered in 1980 whether Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys, the founding duo of electronic band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, were emerging as "the Lennon and McCartney of the electronic world"; music journalists subsequently began to describe the pair as "the Lennon–McCartney of synth-pop".
When McCartney teamed up with Elvis Costello in 1989, Costello's acerbic style earned him comparisons to Lennon in his role as McCartney's collaborator. McCartney, despite conceding that Costello has "got a bit of Lennon in him", characterized the pairing as "a new thing".
Beatles catalogue.
The Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership makes up the majority of the Beatles' catalogue. The first two UK studio albums included 12 cover tunes and 15 Lennon–McCartney songs, with one track ("Don't Bother Me") credited to George Harrison. Their third UK album, "A Hard Day's Night" (1964), is the only Beatles album made up entirely of Lennon–McCartney compositions. The next album released, "Beatles for Sale" (1964), included six covers and eight Lennon–McCartney originals. The subsequent release, "Help!" (1965), had two covers and two Harrison compositions along with ten Lennon–McCartney tracks; it was the last Beatles album to feature a non-original composition until "Let It Be", which included an arrangement of the traditional Liverpool folk song "Maggie Mae". Among the songs in this post-"Help!" output, Harrison contributed between one and four songs per album, and Ringo Starr wrote two songs in total and received a joint credit with Lennon and McCartney for a third ("What Goes On"). In addition, "Flying" and "Dig It" were credited to all four Beatles. The rest of the catalogue came from Lennon and McCartney.
Lennon and McCartney gave songs to Starr to sing, and to Harrison before he started writing his own material. As for the songs they kept for themselves, each partner mostly sang his own composition, often with the other providing harmonies, or they shared lead vocal. If each contributed a fragment to make a whole song, he might sing his portion, as in the case of "I've Got a Feeling" and "A Day in the Life". "Every Little Thing" is a rare example of a Lennon–McCartney song in which one member of the partnership was primary composer (McCartney) but the other sang lead vocal (Lennon). McCartney sings in unison with Lennon on the verses, but Lennon's vocal is more prominent. McCartney sings the high harmony on the chorus.
In January 2017, McCartney filed a suit in United States district court against Sony/ATV Music Publishing seeking to reclaim ownership of his share of the Lennon–McCartney song catalogue beginning in 2018. Under US copyright law, for works published before 1978 the author can reclaim copyrights assigned to a publisher after 56 years. McCartney and Sony agreed to a confidential settlement in June 2017.
Non-Beatles songs.
Several songs credited to Lennon–McCartney were originally released by bands other than the Beatles, especially those managed by Brian Epstein. Recording a Lennon–McCartney song helped launch new performing-artists' careers. Many of the recordings below were included on the 1979 compilation album "The Songs Lennon and McCartney Gave Away". Beatles versions of some of these were recorded; some were not released until after their split, on compilations such as "Live at the BBC" (1994) and "The Beatles Anthology" (1995–96).
In April 2024, the surviving Beatles sons James McCartney and Sean Ono Lennon worked together on the song "Primrose Hill" for McCartney's upcoming album.
Four songs and a soundtrack album were released during this period but credited solely to Paul McCartney:
Unreleased songs.
The following compositions are believed to have been written by Lennon and McCartney, but never officially released by the Beatles or any other artist except as noted below. Many have appeared on Beatles bootlegs, an exception being "Carnival of Light". The list of unreleased songs includes some of the earliest Lennon–McCartney joint works dating back to the Quarrymen, the group that evolved into the Beatles. Several of these songs were revisited during the "Get Back" sessions of early 1969.
References.
Citations.
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Bibliography.
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The Songs Lennon and McCartney Gave Away
The Songs Lennon and McCartney Gave Away is a conceptual compilation album containing the original artist recordings of songs composed by John Lennon and Paul McCartney in the 1960s that they had elected not to release as Beatles songs. The album was released in the UK in 1979.
With the exception of "I'm the Greatest", a Ringo Starr album track written for him by John Lennon in 1973, all songs were recorded and released as singles during the active Beatles years in the 1960s.
There are three songs written by Paul McCartney when the Beatles were together that are not in this compilation: “Thingumybob", recorded by Black Dyke Mills Band; "Goodbye", recorded by Mary Hopkin; and "Come and Get It", recorded by Badfinger.
A similar but less comprehensive compilation, "The Stars Sing Lennon & McCartney", had been released on EMI's mid-price Music for Pleasure label in 1971.
Background.
Lennon and McCartney started writing songs together in the late 1950s and by 1963 were prolific composers who wrote songs for the Beatles and also for other artists. There were broadly three categories of Lennon–McCartney songs that were not released by the Beatles:
In the earliest days of their songwriting partnership, Lennon and McCartney expressed a desire to emulate the success of composing duos such as Goffin & King and Leiber & Stoller in having their compositions recorded by other artists, so this was an aspect of the songwriting craft that they were interested in pursuing.
With the encouragement of the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein, they supplied some of their songs deemed unsuitable for the Beatles to fellow artists, several of whom were also managed by Epstein and were friends of the Beatles. Once the Beatles' initial success in early-mid 1963 mushroomed into a phenomenon, there was great interest in songs written by the Beatles "in-house" writing duo. Artists began clamouring to secure original Lennon–McCartney songs knowing that there would automatically be media and public interest in such songs.
The quality of the songs and the subsequent commercial success of such songs added to the demand by artists for even more compositions.
Track listing.
Notes:
Artwork.
McCartney's profile in the artwork for the front cover reused a portion of the illustration from the Beatles' album "Revolver", and Lennon's profile is a drawing that duplicated the back-cover photograph from his album "Imagine".
References.
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The Music of Lennon & McCartney
The Music of Lennon & McCartney is a 1965 British television special honouring the songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the English rock band the Beatles. It was produced by Granada Television and aired on that station on 16 December 1965 before receiving a national broadcast across the entire ITV network, of which Granada was a part, the following evening. The programme mainly consisted of other artists miming to their recordings of Lennon–McCartney songs, interspersed with scripted commentary from Lennon and McCartney. In addition, the Beatles performed both sides of their current single, "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work It Out". Peter Sellers performed a comedic interpretation of "A Hard Day's Night", in the style of stage actor Laurence Olivier's portrayal of Richard III.
The special served as further recognition for the Beatles, particularly Lennon and McCartney, outside the usual parameters of pop music. It followed the band members being presented with their MBEs in late October 1965 and led to a surge in the number of cover versions of Lennon–McCartney songs. The special was not shown again until December 1985, when it aired as part of Channel 4's celebration of 30 years of Granada Television.
Background and filming.
"The Music of Lennon & McCartney" was a project initiated by Johnnie Hamp, who had championed the Beatles on Granada Television in 1962, a year before the band achieved national fame. Hamp intended the 1965 special to be a tribute to the Lennon–McCartney songwriting partnership. Negotiations to ensure the Beatles' participation were held for two months. The format was a variety special. Paul McCartney later said that the show "wasn't really our thing", and that he and John Lennon only agreed to participate out of loyalty towards Hamp. While the band committed to the Granada project, they turned down an invitation to perform at the Royal Variety Show and refused to reprise the Beatles Christmas Shows they had held over the 1963–64 and 1964–65 holiday seasons.
Filming took place at Granada's studios in Manchester on 1–2 November 1965. The Beatles interrupted the recording sessions for their album "Rubber Soul", which they were under pressure to complete for a pre-Christmas release, in order to appear on the programme. Lennon and McCartney's contributions included delivering the scripted links between other artists' performances of their songs. George Harrison and Ringo Starr joined their bandmates to film mimed performances of both sides of the Beatles' forthcoming single, "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work It Out". The set design featured scaffolding around the walls, and steps and ladders. The harmonium played by Lennon during "We Can Work It Out" was the same instrument seen in Granada's popular soap opera "Coronation Street". The Pamela Devis Dancers provided the choreography for some of the musical segments.
Peter Sellers filmed his contribution in advance at a studio in London, due to his other film commitments. The Beatles admired R&B singer Esther Phillips and had her flown over from America to give her first performances in the UK.
Programme content.
All information per John Winn's book "Way Beyond Compare: The Beatles' Recorded Legacy, Volume One, 1962–1965", unless otherwise noted.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Broadcast.
"Melody Maker" announced the TV special, along with the imminent release of "Day Tripper" / "We Can Work It Out" and "Rubber Soul", and the dates for the band's 1965 UK tour, on the front page of its 4 December issue. The special aired on the Granada network in the north of England between 9.40 and 10.35 pm on 16 December, and then received a nationwide broadcast on ITV on 17 December. It was the only television appearance the Beatles made in conjunction with the release of their new music, as promotional films for "Day Tripper" and "We Can Work It Out" were used to promote the single on "Top of the Pops" and other TV shows. "The Music of Lennon & McCartney" inspired the band's decision to make these clips, which served as forerunners to music videos becoming the standard means of promoting pop singles.
At the time, Lennon said of his and McCartney's songs: "There are only about a hundred people in the world who really understand what our music is all about. Ringo, George, and a few others scattered around the globe... The reason so many people use our numbers and add nothing at all to them is that they do not understand the music. Consequently they make a mess of it."
The recognition afforded the Lennon–McCartney partnership followed BBC Radio's "Songwriters" programme on the pair's achievements, while Mike Hennessey, writing in the same issue of "Melody Maker", said the Beatles were "a pop music phenomenon which may very well never recur on such a monumental scale", adding: "But unquestionably the biggest single factor in their unprecedented success is the superb songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney." In his book "1965: The Making of Modern Britain", Christopher Bray writes that such was the band's ascendancy that year, the Beatles were "everywhere", as not only leaders of a "new aristocracy" but also recipients of MBEs. The latter was an unprecedented appointment for pop stars at the time and a reflection of British politicians' recognition of the Beatles' influence and mass appeal. Combined with the critical and public acclaim given to "Rubber Soul", the show resulted in a surge in cover recordings of works from the Beatles' Northern Songs publishing catalogue. In author Bob Spitz's description: "By mid-1966, an astounding eighty-eight Lennon–McCartney songs had been recorded in over 2,900 versions. Gershwin finally had competition."
Availability.
"The Music of Lennon & McCartney" was not aired again until 30 December 1985. It was shown on Channel 4 as part of an evening of programmes recognising 30 years of Granada Television. Due to this broadcast, the programme began circulating among bootleg collectors for the first time. The "Day Tripper" segment was included in the Beatles "1+" CD and DVD set, released in November 2015.
Among Beatles biographers, John Winn describes the Granada special as a "semisuccessful attempt to spotlight John and Paul's songwriting abilities". He says that the pair's "scripted banter is delivered awkwardly" and "neither are comfortable with the whole idea of the show, let alone the corny manner in which they are participating." Hunter Davies similarly finds Lennon and McCartney's spoken contributions "corny", although he gives the programme a score of seven out of ten with the assessment: "Great tribute show, with two fine Beatles performances as well." "Rolling Stone" critic Rob Sheffield recognises Sellers' segment as an "offbeat highlight" in which the comedian renders "the lyrics as a Shakesperean monologue... making them sound even filthier".
Notes.
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Paul McCartney
English musician and member of the Beatles (born 1942)
Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and the piano, and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One of the most successful composers and performers of all time, McCartney is known for his melodic approach to bass-playing, versatile and wide tenor vocal range, and musical eclecticism, exploring genres ranging from pre-rock and roll pop to classical, ballads, and electronica. His songwriting partnership with Lennon is the most successful in modern music history.
Born in Liverpool, McCartney taught himself piano, guitar, and songwriting as a teenager, having been influenced by his father, a jazz player, and rock and roll performers such as Little Richard and Buddy Holly. He began his career when he joined Lennon's skiffle group, the Quarrymen, in 1957, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. Sometimes called "the cute Beatle", McCartney later immersed himself in the London avant-garde scene and played a key role in incorporating experimental aesthetics into the Beatles' studio productions. Starting with the 1967 album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", he gradually became the band's "de facto" leader, providing creative impetus for most of their music and film projects. Many of his Beatles songs, including "And I Love Her", "Yesterday", "Eleanor Rigby", and "Blackbird", rank among the most covered songs in history. Although primarily a bassist with the Beatles, he played a number of other instruments, including keyboards, guitars, and drums, on various songs.
After the Beatles disbanded, he debuted as a solo artist with the 1970 album "McCartney" and went on to form the band Wings with his first wife, Linda, and Denny Laine. Under McCartney's leadership, Wings became one of the most successful bands of the 1970s. He wrote or co-wrote their US or UK number-one hits, such as "My Love", "Band on the Run", "Listen to What the Man Said", "Silly Love Songs", and "Mull of Kintyre". He resumed his solo career in 1980 and has been touring as a solo artist since 1989. Apart from Wings, his UK or US number-one hits include "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" (with Linda), "Coming Up", "Pipes of Peace", "Ebony and Ivory" (with Stevie Wonder), and "Say Say Say" (with Michael Jackson). Beyond music, he has been involved in projects to promote international charities related to animal rights, seal hunting, land mines, vegetarianism, poverty, and music education. In 2014 and in 2015, with American rapper Kanye West, he has worked on his songs "Only One", "FourFiveSeconds" (with Rihanna) and "All Day", the latter earned him in 2016 two Grammy Award for Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance nominations, his first hip-hop record to be nominated for a Grammy although a rock artist.
McCartney has written or co-written a record 32 songs that have topped the "Billboard" Hot 100 and, as of 2009[ [update]], he had sales of 25.5 million RIAA-certified units in the US. His honours include two inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 1999), an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, 19 Grammy Awards, an appointment as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1965, and an appointment as Knight Bachelor in 1997 for services to music. As of 2024, he is one of the wealthiest musicians in the world, with an estimated fortune of £1 billion.
Early life.
James Paul McCartney was born on 18 June 1942 at Walton Hospital in the Walton area of Liverpool, where his mother, Mary Patricia (née Mohin), had qualified to practise as a nurse. Both of his parents were of Irish descent. McCartney has a younger brother, Peter Michael, and a younger stepsister, Ruth, born to his father Jim's second wife, Angie, during her first marriage. Paul and Michael were baptised in their mother's Catholic faith, even though their father was a former Protestant who had turned agnostic. Religion was not emphasised in the household.
Before the war, Jim had worked as a salesman for the cotton merchants A. Hannay and Co., having been promoted from his job as a sample boy in their warehouse; when the war broke out, Hannay's was shuttered, and Jim was employed as a lathe turner at Napier's defence engineering works, volunteering for the fire brigade at night. The growing family was rehoused at a flat in Knowsley in 1944 and then in a council housing development in Speke in 1946. After the war, Jim returned to his job at the cotton merchants with a reduced income. Mary's work as a visiting midwife was much more remunerative.
McCartney attended Stockton Wood Road Primary School in Speke from 1947 until 1949, when he transferred to Joseph Williams Junior School in Belle Vale because of overcrowding at Stockton. In 1953, he was one of only three students out of 90 to pass the 11-Plus exam, meaning he could attend the Liverpool Institute, a grammar school rather than a secondary modern school. In 1954, he met schoolmate George Harrison on the bus from his suburban home in Speke. The two quickly became friends; McCartney later admitted: "I tended to talk down to him because he was a year younger."
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The type of people that I came from, I never saw better! [...] I mean, the Presidents, the Prime Minister, I never met anyone half as nice as some of the people I know from Liverpool who are nothing, who do nothing. They're not important or famous. But they are smart, like my dad was smart. I mean, people who can just cut through problems like a hot knife through butter. The kind of people you need in life. Salt of the earth.
— Paul McCartney, "Playboy" interview, 1984
Mary McCartney's midwifery paid well, and her earnings enabled them to move into 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton, where they lived until 1964. She rode a bicycle to her patients; McCartney described an early memory of her leaving at "about three in the morning [the] streets ... thick with snow". On 31 October 1956, when McCartney was 14, his mother died of an embolism as a complication of surgery for breast cancer. McCartney's loss later became a connection with John Lennon, whose mother, Julia, died in 1958 when Lennon was 17.
McCartney's father was a trumpet player and pianist who led Jim Mac's Jazz Band in the 1920s. He kept an upright piano in the front room, encouraged his sons to be musical and advised McCartney to take piano lessons. However, McCartney preferred to learn by ear. When McCartney was 11, his father encouraged him to audition for the Liverpool Cathedral choir, but he was not accepted. McCartney then joined the choir at St Barnabas' Church, Mossley Hill. McCartney received a nickel-plated trumpet from his father for his fourteenth birthday, but when rock and roll became popular on Radio Luxembourg, McCartney traded it for a £15 Framus Zenith (model 17) acoustic guitar, since he wanted to be able to sing while playing. He found it difficult to play guitar right-handed, but after noticing a poster advertising a Slim Whitman concert and realising that Whitman played left-handed, he reversed the order of the strings. McCartney wrote his first song, "I Lost My Little Girl", on the Zenith, and composed another early tune that would become "When I'm Sixty-Four" on the piano. American rhythm and blues influenced him, and Little Richard was his schoolboy idol; "Long Tall Sally" was the first song McCartney performed in public, at a Butlin's Filey holiday camp talent competition.
Career.
1957–1960: The Quarrymen.
At the age of fifteen on 6 July 1957, McCartney met John Lennon and his band, the Quarrymen, at the St Peter's Church Hall fête in Woolton. The Quarrymen played a mix of rock and roll and skiffle, a type of popular music with jazz, blues and folk influences. Soon afterwards, the members of the band invited McCartney to join as a rhythm guitarist, and he formed a close working relationship with Lennon. Harrison joined in 1958 as lead guitarist, followed by Lennon's art school friend Stuart Sutcliffe on bass, in 1960. By May 1960, the band had tried several names, including "Johnny and the Moondogs", "Beatals" and "the Silver Beetles". They adopted the name "the Beatles" in August 1960 and recruited drummer Pete Best shortly before a five-engagement residency in Hamburg.
1960–1970: The Beatles.
In 1961, Sutcliffe left the band, and McCartney became their bass player. It is disputed whether he did so reluctantly or actively sought out the role. While in Hamburg, they recorded professionally for the first time and were credited as the Beat Brothers, who were the backing band for English singer Tony Sheridan on the single "My Bonnie". This resulted in attention from Brian Epstein, who was a key figure in their subsequent development and success. He became their manager in January 1962. Ringo Starr replaced Best in August, and the band had their first hit, "Love Me Do", in October, becoming popular in the UK in 1963, and in the US a year later. The fan hysteria became known as "Beatlemania", and the press sometimes referred to McCartney as the "cute Beatle". McCartney co-wrote (with Lennon) several of their early hits, including "I Saw Her Standing There", "She Loves You", "I Want to Hold Your Hand" (1963) and "Can't Buy Me Love" (1964).
In August 1965, the Beatles released the McCartney composition "Yesterday", featuring a string quartet. Included on the "Help!" LP, the song was the group's first recorded use of classical music elements and their first recording that involved only a single band member. "Yesterday" became one of the most covered songs in popular music history. Later that year, during recording sessions for the album "Rubber Soul", McCartney began to supplant Lennon as the dominant musical force in the band. Musicologist Ian MacDonald wrote, "from [1965] ... [McCartney] would be in the ascendant not only as a songwriter, but also as instrumentalist, arranger, producer, and "de facto" musical director of the Beatles." Critics described "Rubber Soul" as a significant advance in the refinement and profundity of the band's music and lyrics. Considered a high point in the Beatles catalogue, both Lennon and McCartney said they had written the music for the song "In My Life". McCartney said of the album, "we'd had our cute period, and now it was time to expand." Recording engineer Norman Smith stated that the "Rubber Soul" sessions exposed indications of increasing contention within the band: "the clash between John and Paul was becoming obvious ... [and] as far as Paul was concerned, George [Harrison] could do no right—Paul was absolutely finicky."
In 1966, the Beatles released the album "Revolver". Featuring sophisticated lyrics, studio experimentation, and an expanded repertoire of musical genres ranging from innovative string arrangements to psychedelic rock, the album marked an artistic leap for the Beatles. The first of three consecutive McCartney A-sides, the single "Paperback Writer" preceded the LP's release. The Beatles produced a short promotional film for the song, and another for its B-side, "Rain". The films, described by Harrison as "the forerunner of videos", aired on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and "Top of the Pops" in June 1966. "Revolver" also included McCartney's "Eleanor Rigby", which featured a string octet. According to Jonathan Gould, the song is "a neoclassical tour de force ... a true hybrid, conforming to no recognizable style or genre of song". Except for some backing vocals, the song included only McCartney's lead vocal and the strings arranged by producer George Martin.
The band gave their final commercial concert at the end of their 1966 US tour. Later that year, McCartney completed his first musical project independent of the group—a film score for the UK production "The Family Way". The score was a collaboration with Martin, who used two McCartney themes to write thirteen variations. The soundtrack failed to chart, but it won McCartney an Ivor Novello Award for Best Instrumental Theme.
Upon the end of the Beatles' performing career, McCartney sensed unease in the band and wanted them to maintain creative productivity. He pressed them to start a new project, which became "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", widely regarded as rock's first concept album. McCartney was inspired to create a new persona for the group, to serve as a vehicle for experimentation and to demonstrate to their fans that they had musically matured. He invented the fictional band of the album's title track. As McCartney explained, "We were fed up with being the Beatles. We really hated that fucking four little mop-top approach. We were not boys we were men ... and [we] thought of ourselves as artists rather than just performers."
Starting in November 1966, the band adopted an experimental attitude during recording sessions for the album. Their recording of "A Day in the Life" required a forty-piece orchestra, which Martin and McCartney took turns conducting. The sessions produced the double A-side single "Strawberry Fields Forever"/"Penny Lane" in February 1967, and the LP followed in June. Based on an ink drawing by McCartney, the LP's cover included a collage designed by pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, featuring the Beatles in costume as the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, standing with a host of celebrities. The cover piqued a frenzy of analysis.
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After Brian died ... Paul took over and supposedly led us you know ... we went round in circles ... We broke up then. That was the disintegration. I thought, 'we've fuckin' had it.'
— John Lennon, "Rolling Stone" magazine, 1970
Epstein's death in August 1967 created a void, which left the Beatles perplexed and concerned about their future. McCartney stepped in to fill that void and gradually became the "de facto" leader and business manager of the group that Lennon had once led. In his first creative suggestion after this change of leadership, McCartney proposed that the band move forward on their plans to produce a film for television, which was to become "Magical Mystery Tour". According to Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn, the project was "an administrative nightmare throughout". McCartney largely directed the film, which brought the group their first unfavourable critical response. However, the film's soundtrack was more successful. It was released in the UK as a six-track double extended play disc (EP) and as an identically titled LP in the US, filled out with five songs from the band's recent singles. The only Capitol compilation later included in the group's official canon of studio albums, the "Magical Mystery Tour" LP achieved $8 million in sales within three weeks of its release, higher initial sales than any other Capitol LP up to that point.
The Beatles' animated film "Yellow Submarine", loosely based on the imaginary world evoked by McCartney's 1966 composition, premiered in July 1968. Though critics admired the film for its visual style, humour and music, the soundtrack album issued six months later received a less enthusiastic response. By late 1968, relations within the band were deteriorating. The tension grew during the recording of their eponymous double album, also known as the "White Album". Matters worsened the following year during the "Let It Be" sessions, when a camera crew filmed McCartney lecturing the group: "We've been very negative since Mr. Epstein passed away ... we were always fighting [his] discipline a bit, but it's silly to fight that discipline if it's our own".
In March 1969, McCartney married his first wife, Linda Eastman, and in August, the couple had their first child, Mary, named after his late mother. "Abbey Road" was the band's last recorded album, and Martin suggested "a continuously moving piece of music", urging the group to think symphonically. McCartney agreed, but Lennon did not. They eventually compromised, agreeing to McCartney's suggestion: an LP featuring individual songs on side one and a long medley on side two. In October 1969, a rumour surfaced that McCartney had died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike, but this was quickly refuted when a November "Life" magazine cover featured him and his family, accompanied by the caption "Paul is still with us".
John Lennon privately left the Beatles in September 1969, though agreed not to go public with the information to not jeopardise ongoing business negotiations. McCartney was in the midst of business disagreements with his bandmates, largely concerning Allen Klein's management of the group, when he announced his own departure from the group on 10 April 1970. He filed a suit for the band's formal dissolution on 31 December 1970, and in March 1971 the court appointed a receiver to oversee the finances of the Beatles' company Apple Corps. An English court legally dissolved the Beatles' partnership on 9 January 1975, though sporadic lawsuits against their record company EMI, Klein, and each other persisted until 1989.
1970–1981: Wings.
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I didn't really want to keep going as a solo artist ... so it became obvious that I had to get a band together ... Linda and I talked it through and it was like, "Yeah, but let's not put together a supergroup, let's go back to square one."
— McCartney
As the Beatles were breaking up in 1969–70, McCartney fell into a depression. His wife helped him pull out of that condition by praising his work as a songwriter and convincing him to continue writing and recording. In her honour, he wrote "Maybe I'm Amazed", explaining that with the Beatles breaking up, "that was my feeling: Maybe I'm amazed at what's going on ... Maybe I'm a man and maybe you're the only woman who could ever help me; Baby won't you help me understand ... Maybe I'm amazed at the way you pulled me out of time, hung me on the line, Maybe I'm amazed at the way I really need you." He added that "every love song I write is for Linda."
In 1970, McCartney continued his musical career with his first solo release, "McCartney", a US number-one album. Apart from some vocal contributions from Linda, "McCartney" is a one-man album, with McCartney providing compositions, instrumentation and vocals. In 1971, he collaborated with Linda and drummer Denny Seiwell on a second album, "Ram". A UK number one and a US top five, "Ram" included the co-written US number-one hit single "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey". Later that year, ex-Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine joined the McCartneys and Seiwell to form the band Wings. McCartney had this to say on the group's formation: "Wings were always a difficult idea ... any group having to follow [the Beatles'] success would have a hard job ... I found myself in that very position. However, it was a choice between going on or finishing, and I loved music too much to think of stopping." In September 1971, the McCartneys' daughter Stella was born, named in honour of Linda's grandmothers, both of whom were named Stella.
Following the addition of guitarist Henry McCullough, Wings' first concert tour began in 1972 with a debut performance in front of an audience of seven hundred at the University of Nottingham. Ten more gigs followed as they travelled across the UK in a van during an unannounced tour of universities, during which the band stayed in modest accommodation and received pay in coinage collected from students, while avoiding Beatles songs during their performances. McCartney later said, "The main thing I didn't want was to come on stage, faced with the whole torment of five rows of press people with little pads, all looking at me and saying, 'Oh well, he is not as good as he was.' So we decided to go out on that university tour which made me less nervous ... by the end of that tour I felt ready for something else, so we went into Europe." During the seven-week, 25-show Wings Over Europe Tour, the band played almost solely Wings and McCartney solo material: the Little Richard cover "Long Tall Sally" was the only song that the Beatles had previously recorded. McCartney wanted the tour to avoid large venues; most of the small halls they played had capacities of fewer than 3,000 people.
In March 1973, Wings achieved their first US number-one single, "My Love", included on their second LP, "Red Rose Speedway", a US number one and UK top five. McCartney's collaboration with Linda and former Beatles producer Martin resulted in the song "Live and Let Die", which was the theme song for the James Bond film of the same name. Nominated for an Academy Award, the song reached number two in the US and number nine in the UK. It also earned Martin a Grammy for his orchestral arrangement. Music professor and author Vincent Benitez described the track as "symphonic rock at its best".
After the departure of McCullough and Seiwell in 1973, the McCartneys and Laine recorded "Band on the Run". The album was the first of seven platinum Wings LPs. It was a US and UK number one, the band's first to top the charts in both countries and the first ever to reach "Billboard" magazine's charts on three separate occasions. One of the best-selling releases of the decade, it remained on the UK charts for 124 weeks. "Rolling Stone" named it one of the Best Albums of the Year for 1973, and in 1975, Paul McCartney and Wings won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance for the song "Band on the Run", and Geoff Emerick won the Grammy for Best Engineered Recording for the album. In 1974, Wings achieved a second US number-one single with the title track. The album also included the top-ten hits "Jet" and "Helen Wheels", and earned the 418th spot on "Rolling Stone's" list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 1974, McCartney hired guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and drummer Geoff Britton to replace McCullough and Seiwell. Britton subsequently quit during recording sessions in 1975 and was replaced by Joe English.
Wings followed "Band on the Run" with the chart-topping albums "Venus and Mars" (1975) and "Wings at the Speed of Sound" (1976). In 1975, they began the fourteen-month Wings Over the World Tour, which included stops in the UK, Australia, Europe and the US. The tour marked the first time McCartney performed Beatles songs live with Wings, with five in the two-hour set list: "I've Just Seen a Face", "Yesterday", "Blackbird", "Lady Madonna" and "The Long and Winding Road". Following the second European leg of the tour and extensive rehearsals in London, the group undertook an ambitious US arena tour that yielded the US number-one live triple LP "Wings over America".
In September 1977, the McCartneys' third child was born, a son they named James. In November, the Wings song "Mull of Kintyre", co-written with Laine, was quickly becoming one of the best-selling singles in UK chart history. The most successful single of McCartney's solo career, it achieved double the sales of the previous record holder, "She Loves You", and went on to sell 2.5 million copies and hold the UK sales record until the 1984 charity single, "Do They Know It's Christmas?"
"London Town" (1978) spawned a US number-one single ("With a Little Luck"), and continued Wings' string of commercial successes, making the top five in both the US and the UK. Critical reception was unfavourable, and McCartney expressed disappointment with the album. "Back to the Egg" (1979) featured McCartney's assemblage of a rock supergroup dubbed "Rockestra" on two tracks. The band included Wings along with Pete Townshend, David Gilmour, Gary Brooker, John Paul Jones, John Bonham and others. Though certified platinum, critics panned the album. Wings completed their final concert tour in 1979, with twenty shows in the UK that included the live debut of the Beatles songs "Got to Get You into My Life", "The Fool on the Hill" and "Let It Be".
In 1980, McCartney released his second solo LP, the self-produced "McCartney II", which peaked at number one in the UK and number three in the US. As with his first album, he composed and performed it alone. The album contained the song "Coming Up", the live version of which, recorded in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1979 by Wings, became the group's last number-one hit. By 1981, McCartney felt he had accomplished all he could creatively with Wings and decided he needed a change. The group discontinued in April 1981 after Laine quit following disagreements over royalties and salaries.
1982–1990.
In 1982, McCartney collaborated with Stevie Wonder on the Martin-produced number-one hit "Ebony and Ivory", included on McCartney's "Tug of War" LP, and with Michael Jackson on "The Girl Is Mine" from "Thriller". "Ebony and Ivory" was McCartney's record 28th single to hit number one on the "Billboard" 100. The following year, he and Jackson worked on "Say Say Say", McCartney's most recent US number one as of 2014[ [update]]. McCartney earned his latest UK number one as of 2014[ [update]] with the title track of his LP release that year, "Pipes of Peace".
In 1984, McCartney starred in "Give My Regards to Broad Street", a feature film he also wrote and produced and which included Starr in an acting role. It was disparaged by critics: "Variety" described the film as "characterless, bloodless, and pointless"; while Roger Ebert awarded it a single star, writing, "you can safely skip the movie and proceed directly to the soundtrack". The album fared much better, reaching number one in the UK and producing the US top-ten hit single "No More Lonely Nights", featuring David Gilmour on lead guitar. In 1985, Warner Brothers commissioned McCartney to write a song for the comedic feature film "Spies Like Us". He composed and recorded the track in four days, with Phil Ramone co-producing. McCartney participated in Live Aid, performing "Let it Be", but technical difficulties rendered his vocals and piano barely audible for the first two verses, punctuated by squeals of feedback. Equipment technicians resolved the problems and David Bowie, Alison Moyet, Pete Townshend and Bob Geldof joined McCartney on stage, receiving an enthusiastic crowd reaction.
McCartney collaborated with Eric Stewart on "Press to Play" (1986), with Stewart co-writing more than half the songs on the LP. In 1988, McCartney released "Снова в СССР", initially available only in the Soviet Union, which contained eighteen covers; recorded over the course of two days. In 1989, he joined forces with fellow Merseysiders Gerry Marsden and Holly Johnson to record an updated version of "Ferry Cross the Mersey", for the Hillsborough disaster appeal fund. That same year, he released "Flowers in the Dirt"; a collaborative effort with Elvis Costello that included musical contributions from Gilmour and Nicky Hopkins. McCartney then formed a band consisting of himself and Linda, with Hamish Stuart and Robbie McIntosh on guitars, Paul "Wix" Wickens on keyboards and Chris Whitten on drums. In September 1989, they launched the Paul McCartney World Tour, his first in over a decade. During the tour, McCartney performed for the largest paying stadium audience in history on 21 April 1990, when 184,000 people attended his concert at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. That year, he released the triple album "Tripping the Live Fantastic", which contained selected performances from the tour.
1991–1999.
McCartney ventured into orchestral music in 1991 when the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society commissioned a musical piece by him to celebrate its sesquicentennial. He collaborated with composer Carl Davis, producing "Liverpool Oratorio". The performance featured opera singers Kiri Te Kanawa, Sally Burgess, Jerry Hadley and Willard White with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the choir of Liverpool Cathedral. Reviews were negative. "The Guardian" was especially critical, describing the music as "afraid of anything approaching a fast tempo", and adding that the piece has "little awareness of the need for recurrent ideas that will bind the work into a whole". The paper published a letter McCartney submitted in response in which he noted several of the work's faster tempos and added, "happily, history shows that many good pieces of music were not liked by the critics of the time so I am content to ... let people judge for themselves the merits of the work." "The New York Times" was slightly more generous, stating, "There are moments of beauty and pleasure in this dramatic miscellany ... the music's innocent sincerity makes it difficult to be put off by its ambitions". Performed around the world after its London premiere, the "Liverpool Oratorio" reached number one on the UK classical chart, "Music Week".
In 1991, McCartney performed a selection of acoustic-only songs on "MTV Unplugged" and released a live album of the performance titled "Unplugged (The Official Bootleg)". During the 1990s, McCartney collaborated twice with Youth of Killing Joke as the musical duo "the Fireman". The two released their first electronica album together, "Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest", in 1993. McCartney released the rock album "Off the Ground" in 1993. The subsequent New World Tour followed, which led to the release of the "Paul Is Live" album later that year.
Starting in 1994, McCartney took a four-year break from his solo career to work on Apple's "Beatles Anthology" project with Harrison, Starr and Martin. He recorded a radio series called "Oobu Joobu" in 1995 for the American network Westwood One, which he described as "widescreen radio". Also in 1995, Prince Charles presented him with an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Music—"kind of amazing for somebody who doesn't read a note of music", commented McCartney.
In 1997, McCartney released the rock album "Flaming Pie". Starr appeared on drums and backing vocals in "Beautiful Night". Later that year, he released the classical work "Standing Stone", which topped the UK and US classical charts. In 1998, he released "Rushes", the second electronica album by the Fireman. In 1999, McCartney released "Run Devil Run". Recorded in one week, and featuring Ian Paice and David Gilmour, it was primarily an album of covers with three McCartney originals. He had been planning such an album for years, having been previously encouraged to do so by Linda, who had died of cancer in April 1998.
McCartney did an unannounced performance at the benefit tribute, "Concert for Linda", his wife of 29 years who died a year earlier. It was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 10 April 1999, and was organised by two of her close friends, Chrissie Hynde and Carla Lane. Also during 1999, he continued his experimentation with orchestral music on "Working Classical".
2000–2009.
In 2000, he released the electronica album "Liverpool Sound Collage" with Super Furry Animals and Youth, using the sound collage and musique concrète techniques that had fascinated him in the mid-1960s. He contributed the song "Nova" to a tribute album of classical, choral music called "A Garland for Linda" (2000), dedicated to his late wife.
Having witnessed the September 11 attacks from the JFK airport tarmac, McCartney was inspired to take a leading role in organising the Concert for New York City. His studio album release in November that year, "Driving Rain", included the song "Freedom", written in response to the attacks. The following year, McCartney went out on tour with a new band that included guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, accompanied by Paul "Wix" Wickens on keyboards and Abe Laboriel Jr. on drums. They began the Driving World Tour in April 2002, which included stops in the US, Mexico and Japan. The tour resulted in the double live album "Back in the US", released internationally in 2003 as "Back in the World". The tour earned a reported $126.2 million, an average of over $2 million per night, and "Billboard" named it the top tour of the year. The group continues to play together; McCartney has played live with Ray, Anderson, Laboriel, and Wickens longer than he played live with the Beatles or Wings.
In July 2002, McCartney married Heather Mills. In November, on the first anniversary of George Harrison's death, McCartney performed at the Concert for George. He participated in the National Football League's Super Bowl, performing "Freedom" during the pre-game show for Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002 and headlining the halftime show at Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005. The English College of Arms honoured McCartney in 2002 by granting him a coat of arms. His crest, featuring a Liver bird holding an acoustic guitar in its claw, reflects his background in Liverpool and his musical career. The shield includes four curved emblems which resemble beetles' backs. The arms' motto is "Ecce Cor Meum", Latin for "Behold My Heart". In 2003, the McCartneys had a child, Beatrice Milly.
In July 2005, he performed at the Live 8 event in Hyde Park, London, opening the show with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (with U2) and closing it with "Drive My Car" (with George Michael), "Helter Skelter", and "The Long and Winding Road". In September, he released the rock album "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard", for which he provided most of the instrumentation. In 2006, McCartney released the classical work "Ecce Cor Meum". The rock album "Memory Almost Full" followed in 2007. In 2008, he released his third Fireman album, "Electric Arguments". Also in 2008, he performed at a concert in Liverpool to celebrate the city's year as European Capital of Culture. In 2009, after a four-year break, he returned to touring and has since performed over 80 shows. More than forty-five years after the Beatles first appeared on American television during "The Ed Sullivan Show", he returned to the same New York theatre to perform on "Late Show with David Letterman". On 9 September 2009, EMI reissued the Beatles catalogue following a four-year digital remastering effort, releasing a music video game called "" the same day.
McCartney's enduring fame has made him a popular choice to open new venues. In 2009, he performed three sold-out concerts at the newly built Citi Field, a venue constructed to replace Shea Stadium in Queens, New York. These performances yielded the double live album "Good Evening New York City" later that year.
2010–2019.
In 2010, McCartney opened the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; it was his first concert in Pittsburgh since 1990 due to the old Civic Arena being deemed unsuitable for McCartney's logistical needs. In July 2011, McCartney performed at two sold-out concerts at the new Yankee Stadium. A "New York Times" review of the first concert reported that McCartney was "not saying goodbye but touring stadiums and playing marathon concerts". In August 2011, McCartney left EMI and signed with Decca Records, the same record company that famously rejected the Beatles back in January 1962. McCartney was commissioned by the New York City Ballet, and in September 2011, he released his first score for dance, a collaboration with Peter Martins called "Ocean's Kingdom" on Decca Records. Also in 2011, McCartney married Nancy Shevell. He released "Kisses on the Bottom", a collection of standards, in February 2012, the same month that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences honoured him as the MusiCares Person of the Year, two days prior to his performance at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards.
McCartney remains one of the world's top draws. He played to over 100,000 people during two performances in Mexico City in May, with the shows grossing nearly $6 million. In June 2012, McCartney closed Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee Concert held outside Buckingham Palace, performing a set that included "Let It Be" and "Live and Let Die". He closed the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London on 27 July, singing "The End" and "Hey Jude" and inviting the audience to join in on the coda. Having donated his time, he received £1 from the Olympic organisers.
On 12 December 2012, McCartney performed with three former members of Nirvana (Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl, and guest member Pat Smear) during the closing act of , seen by approximately two billion people worldwide. On 28 August 2013, McCartney released the title track of his upcoming studio album "New", which came out in October 2013. A primetime entertainment special was taped on 27 January 2014 at the Ed Sullivan Theater with a 9 February 2014 CBS airing. The show featured McCartney and Ringo Starr, and celebrated the legacy of the Beatles and their groundbreaking 1964 performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show". The show, titled "", featured 22 classic Beatles songs as performed by various artists, including McCartney and Starr.
In May 2014, McCartney cancelled a sold-out tour of Japan and postponed a US tour to October due to begin that month after he contracted a virus. He resumed the tour with a high-energy three-hour appearance in Albany, New York on 5 July 2014. On 14 August 2014, McCartney performed in the final concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California before its demolition; this was the same venue at which the Beatles played their final concert for a paying audience in 1966. In 2014, McCartney wrote and performed "Hope for the Future", the ending song for the video game "Destiny". In November 2014, a 42-song tribute album titled "The Art of McCartney" was released, which features a wide range of artists covering McCartney's solo and Beatles work. Also that year, McCartney collaborated with American rapper Kanye West on the single "Only One", released on 31 December. In January 2015, McCartney collaborated with West and Barbadian singer Rihanna on the single "FourFiveSeconds". They released a music video for the song in January and performed it live at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards on 8 February 2015. McCartney featured on West's 2015 single "All Day", which also features Theophilus London and Allan Kingdom.
In February 2015, McCartney performed with Paul Simon for the "Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special". McCartney and Simon performed the first verse of "I've Just Seen a Face" on acoustic guitars, and McCartney later performed "Maybe I'm Amazed". McCartney shared lead vocals on the Alice Cooper-led "Hollywood Vampires" supergroup's cover of his song "Come and Get It", which appears on their debut album, released on 11 September 2015. On 10 June 2016, McCartney released the career-spanning collection "Pure McCartney". The set includes songs from throughout McCartney's solo career and his work with Wings and the Fireman, and is available in three different formats (2-CD, 4-CD, 4-LP and Digital). The 4-CD version includes 67 tracks, most of which were top-40 hits. McCartney appeared in the 2017 adventure film "", in a cameo role as Uncle Jack.
In January 2017, McCartney filed a suit in United States district court against Sony/ATV Music Publishing seeking to reclaim ownership of his share of the Lennon–McCartney song catalogue beginning in 2018. Under US copyright law, for works published before 1978 the author can reclaim copyrights assigned to a publisher after 56 years. McCartney and Sony agreed to a confidential settlement in June 2017. On 20 June 2018, McCartney released "I Don't Know" and "Come On to Me" from his album "Egypt Station", which was released on 7 September through Capitol Records. "Egypt Station" became McCartney's first album in 36 years to top the "Billboard" 200, and his first to debut at number one. On 26 July 2018, McCartney played at The Cavern Club, with his regular band of Anderson, Ray, Wickens and Abe Laboriel Jr. The gig was filmed and later broadcast by BBC, on Christmas Day 2020, as "Paul McCartney at the Cavern Club."
2020–present.
McCartney's 18th solo album, "McCartney III", was released on 18 December 2020, via Capitol Records; it became his first number-one solo album in the UK since "Flowers in the Dirt" in 1989. The album was recorded in England during the COVID-19 lockdowns and continues McCartney's trend of self-titled solo albums with him playing all of the instruments. An album of "reinterpretations, remixes, and covers" titled "McCartney III Imagined" was released on 16 April 2021.
McCartney's book ' was released in November 2021. Described as a "self-portrait in 154 songs", the book is based on conversations McCartney had with the Irish poet Paul Muldoon. "The Lyrics" was named Book of