Paul McCartney, 83, Says a Fellow Beatle Saved His Most Famous Lyric From Being Cut originally appeared on Parade.
Most people would think being one of the most iconic rock stars of all time would silence all hints of self-doubt, but Paul McCartney recently said that wasn’t the case.
“As a performer, you’re often thinking, ‘Is this any good? Is this rubbish? Is this a cliché?’” McCartney admitted in an interview with Guitar Player published on July 21, 2025.
Even with a laundry list of hits, McCartney said that he still second-guesses himself. He’s previously been open about his insecurities and how fellow Beatle John Lennon provided encouragement over the years.
“Any time you write a song, you’re going, ‘This is crap. This is terrible. Come on,’” the iconic songwriter revealed to GQ in 2020. “So I kick myself and say, ‘Get it better. If it’s terrible, get it better.’ And sometimes someone will come along, someone who you respect, and say, ‘No, that’s great. Don’t worry about that,’ and then show you a side to it that you didn’t notice and, then you’ll go, ‘Oh, yeah.’”
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One moment in particular involved McCartney showing Lennon a song he was working on. While he considered one line a “crummy placeholder,” Lennon immediately saw its potential. The song in question? The timeless classic “Hey Jude.”
“A classic example of that was when I was playing ‘Hey Jude’ to John,” McCartney explained, “and I said, ‘The movement you need is on your shoulder.’ I turned round to him and Yoko [Ono], who was standing behind me, and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll fix that.’”
He continued, “And John said, ‘No, you won’t. That’s the best line in it.’ When someone’s that firm about a line that you’re going to junk, and he said, ‘No, keep it in,’ so, of course, you love that line twice as much because it’s a little stray, it’s a little mutt that you were about to put down and it was reprieved and so it’s more beautiful than ever.”
Paul McCartney, 83, Says a Fellow Beatle Saved His Most Famous Lyric From Being Cut first appeared on Parade on Jul 21, 2025
This story was originally reported by Parade on Jul 21, 2025, where it first appeared.