Credit: Mary McCartney
Tue 8 September 2026 20:30, UK
There aren’t many types of love songs that Paul McCartney hasn’t had some hand in creating throughout his time in the spotlight.
Every other Beatles song seemed to take the traditional puppy love song and twist it on its head ever so slightly, and even when working on his solo projects, Macca was finding new ways to tell stories that didn’t fit into the same format as every other lovestruck ditty on the charts. But even if he could create perfect character portraits, nothing can beat the moments where his entire world seemed to be slowed down when meeting the right person.
And if we’re being completely honest, one of those moments can be traced all the way back to the late 1950s when he met John Lennon for the first time. Much has been made about their relationship ever since the band broke up, but even for all their petty fighting, you could tell that they genuinely loved each other and could always find time to let the other know what they meant to them every now and again.
McCartney’s tribute song to his musical soulmate may have come a bit too late on ‘Here Today’, but by the time the Fab Four were broken up, he had other things on his mind. He didn’t have time to worry about the rest of the band when they were suing him, so the only thing that he could hope to do was start from scratch. And while that was never going to be an easy task, it was going to be ten times easier knowing that he had someone like Linda by his side every step of the way.
You have to remember that she was the one who helped McCartney get off his ass to make his debut solo album, and Wings was the first time that he got to flesh out a band like he did all the way back in his Hamburg days. It wasn’t going to be easy clawing his way back up, but even after Wings folded in the late 1970s, Linda was always around to add the occasional background vocal to one of his tunes.
So when she lost her battle with breast cancer, McCartney was absolutely shattered. He had already lost his mother to the same disease when he was a kid, and even though he fought through his grief admirably, he knew that nothing was ever going to replace Linda in his heart, saying, “She was unique and the world is a better place for having known her. Her message of love will live on in our hearts forever. Linda was, and still is, the love of my life.” And even after moving on to his next album, he couldn’t sidestep any of that.
Linda had one final cameo on Flaming Pie on the track ‘Great Day’, but Driving Rain tends to feel a lot more dejected by comparison. McCartney was still clearly working through his grief, and while he did have a song in tribute to his new girlfriend at the time, ‘Heather’, ‘Magic’ is the one song that reminded everyone of the joy he felt every single time that he thought about his late wife.
Further reading: From The Vault
McCartney had already been one of the biggest artists in the world, but he felt that there was something in the air the minute that he met Linda, saying, “This is about meeting Linda – ‘it must have been magic the night that we met’. I met Linda in a club and I always thought years after, particularly after she died, that if I hadn’t stood up that night in a club we might never have met again.”
It’s always going to be sad knowing that over 20 years of Macca’s discography doesn’t have Linda, they were both the glowing example of how someone could live a domestic life on the road. The life of a rock and roll star isn’t for the faint of heart, but when you are madly in love with someone, it turns out that love is, indeed, all that you need.
