{"id":672076,"date":"2026-11-01T21:12:12","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T21:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/672076\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T21:12:12","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T21:12:12","slug":"the-beatles-songs-paul-mccartney-has-called-his-favorites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/672076\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beatles Songs Paul McCartney Has Called His Favorites"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this point, Paul McCartney<\/a> squarely falls into the category of \u201cliving legend.\u201d At 84, he’s still going strong, releasing new music, and entertaining audiences the world over.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even if it weren’t for his hugely successful solo career, he would, of course, have earned his place in the history books as part of the Beatles alone. That band has arguably influenced more musicians across the last six decades than any other, with seminal albums such as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band\u00a0permanently changing the face of popular music.<\/p>\n

The unexpected Beatles track Paul McCartney loves<\/p>\n

In an interview in 2020<\/a>, the man himself picked out some of his favorite Beatles tracks, and among some expected choices, one selection caught many by surprise. \u201cYou Know My Name (Look Up the Number)\u201d is a lesser-known Fab Four song that was originally released as the B-side to \u201cLet It Be.\u201d It’s a decidedly oddball song that veers from primal, mantra-like rock to tongue-in-cheek vaudeville style with strong comic overtones. McCartney described it as \u201c\u2026a zany, zany little B-side that nobody knows, but we had so much fun making it.”<\/p>\n

The A-side, \u201cLet It Be,\u201d was a more obvious choice. This beautiful song appeared as the title track to the band’s final studio album. It was co-written by John Lennon and McCartney, with the latter explaining that the idea came to him via a dream, in which his sadly deceased mother appeared\u2014hence the line, \u201cWhen I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me.\u201d Released as a single, \u201cLet It Be\u201d hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and holds the distinction of being the last Beatles single released before McCartney formally left the group.<\/p>\n

More of Paul McCartney\u2019s favorite Beatles songs<\/p>\n

Other nominations McCartney cited include the luminous psychedelic classic,
\u201cStrawberry Fields Forever,\u201d which was first issued as a double-A single in 1967, backed with \u201cPenny Lane.\u201d At the time, the song’s radical departure from the band’s previous rock-pop-oriented sound proved divisive. Over the ensuing years, it has been justly acknowledged as a landmark in innovation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHey Jude\u201d also made it onto McCartney’s list\u2014a singalong fan favorite that, as McCartney explained <\/a>in an interview with Rolling Stone, was written for Lennon’s son, Julian. \u201cI happened to be driving out to see Cynthia Lennon,\u201d McCartney said. \u201cI think it was just after John and she had broken up\u2026He\u2019s a nice kid, Julian. And I was going out in me car just vaguely singing this song, and it was like ‘Hey Jules.’ I don\u2019t know why, ‘Hey Jules.’ It was just this thing, you know’\u2026 And then I just thought a better name was Jude.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a 2024 interview on the podcast McCartney: A Life in Lyrics, the musician also shared a preference<\/a> for another rather unexpected Beatles track: \u201cHere, There and Everywhere.\u201d Inspired by Fred Astaire, McCartney penned the track one morning while waiting for Lennon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would go out to his house for a writing session, and he wasn’t always up,\u201d McCartney recalled of the events that led to the song’s creation. \u201cSo I would often have 20 minutes, half an hour while someone told him I was here, and he would get up. I remember sitting out by his swimming pool in his house in Weybridge, which is a golf suburb of London. I had my guitar because I was ready for the writing session. So we sat out and started something…it just went quite nice and smoothly. So by the time I came to write with John, by the time he deemed to get up and have his coffee, I would have something to go on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At this point, Paul McCartney squarely falls into the category of \u201cliving legend.\u201d At 84, he’s still going…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-672076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}