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October 20th, 2026 · 6:00pm BST
The art of being a great songwriter has nothing to do with playing the most notes at any given time.
Anyone can find the time to sit in their bedroom and hash out the right amount of songs until everything sounds perfect, but it only takes the right mind to string the right notes together into a tune that people want to listen to over and over again. And while most people might try to follow in the footsteps of pop songwriters, Bob Dylan was in for something entirely different when he started woodshedding his first rock and roll tunes.
He had already been a staple of the folk world, and he wasn’t about to compromise his vision whenever he started playing electric guitars. The tunes still needed to have the same kind of bite behind them, and hearing ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ is what really turned heads in 1965. No one knew one person could write a song like that with that strong of a lyrical hook, and Neil Young was transfixed as soon as he heard it.
Young always looked up to Dylan as one of the finest songwriters in the world, but this was what really warped his mind and started his journey into songwriting. He figured that there was so much more to explore outside of traditional pop music, but on the other side of the Atlantic, the Summer of Love was also birthing other kinds of music that didn’t cater to what the pop charts might have wanted all the time.
The psychedelic scene didn’t concern itself with being one of the most in-demand genres in the world, but as Pink Floyd shed their psych skin, David Gilmour was always there painting a picture with sound half the time. Roger Waters was the one writing all the lyrics for the band, but Gilmour was always there to act as his emotional translator of sorts, usually throwing in as much passion as he could into every note he played on guitar and each bluesy note he sang.
Each of these three songwriters almost had their own separate languages, but in any good rock and roll band, all roads lead back to The Beatles. Even before Floyd was off the ground, Gilmour was already considering Paul McCartney to be one of his biggest inspirations, saying, “He is a musician in the broadest sense of the word. He can play everything: bass, guitar, piano, drums … And on all these instruments, he has a very good level. We cannot therefore mystify him, he knows exactly what he wants. We owe him certain productions which were not of the greatest interest. But he definitely deserves the success and respect he enjoys.”
People like Young usually only watched from afar, but the Canadian icon was the one that was humble enough to usher Macca into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, saying, “The first song I learned to play was a Beatles song – ‘Give Me Money, That’s What I Want’. Paul McCartney is one of the greatest songwriters ever. He’ll be remembered hundreds of years from now.”
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And while Dylan was the one musician that even McCartney was scared of, he admitted that level of profound respect was a two-way street, saying, “I’m in awe of McCartney. He’s about the only one that I am in awe of. He can do it all. And he’s never let up… He’s just so damn effortless.” But a lot of that craftsmanship that McCartney has only comes with time whenever he sits down to write a new tune.
He was lucky enough to have one of the greatest writing partners alongside him, but the reason why the music McCartney made on his own still resonates is because he’s still on the neverending search to find that next great song. Whether he actually finds it is up to the rest of us, but he knew that there were a whole lot more melodies out there in the wild that he knew needed to be uncovered.
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