Paul McCartney is a gifted songwriter, proven by the dozens of No. 1 hits he’s written. Even more impressive is how quickly he comes up with these gems. Several of his songs he has been able to develop and finish on the spot. While the recording process occurs later, it’s still remarkable that McCartney could spontaneously create excellent music.
Here are 5 songs that Paul McCartney wrote on the spot
‘Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me)’
“Picasso’s Last Words” is a song from Band on the Run, the third studio album from Paul McCartney and Wings. The story goes that McCartney wrote the song while on vacation in Jamaica. The singer-songwriter met actor Dustin Hoffman, who was filming Papillon. After having dinner, Hoffman challenged McCartney to write a song about anything.
So, Hoffman pulled out a magazine with a story about Pablo Picasso’s death and his last words. McCartney began writing the song, and Hoffman became so excited he exclaimed to his wife, “look, he’s doing it…he’s doing it.”
‘Two of Us’
“Two of Us” is the opening track of The Beatles’ final album, Let it Be. While many believe the song is about John Lennon and contractual issues, Paul McCartney said the track was about his first wife, Linda. In an interview with Rolling Stone, McCartney said he wrote the song while on a date with her. She always loved getting lost somewhere, so the two traveled out into the London woods.
“I had my guitar because I pretty much took it everywhere with me and just started writing that song,” McCartney said. “It came very easily because it was commenting on what we were doing, but going a bit more lyrical with it, more poetic.”
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‘I Wanna Be Your Man’
“I Wanna Be Your Man” is a song that McCartney and Lennon gave to The Rolling Stones. The songwriting duo went to go see the Stones play at a club. The band asked them for a song, and McCartney already had a bit of the track ready to go. They then finished it there and gave it to Mick Jagger and the rest of the band. Lennon called the song a “throwaway,” but it became the first hit for The Rolling Stones.
‘Somedays’
Paul McCartney could not only write songs spontaneously, but he could do it quickly. “Somedays” comes from his 10th album, Flaming Pie, and it’s a track he managed to write within two hours. In an interview with Global News, McCartney said he went to one of Linda’s photoshoots, which he knew would be around two hours. He gave himself a two-hour deadline and managed to get “Somedays” out of it.
‘My Valentine’
The most recent song on this list, “My Valentine,” is a love song dedicated to his wife, Nancy Shevell. From his 2012 album Kisses on the Bottom, McCartney wrote the song while on vacation with Nancy in Morocco. It was raining horribly, so the two were often stuck in the hotel. However, the former Beatle found a piano in the hotel, where he wrote this song. It was also a coincidence that it happened to be Valentine’s Day.
