Paul McCartney admits he hasn’t analyzed his singing voice. However, the former Beatle has admitted to stealing other artists’ voices for specific songs.
Paul McCartney hasn’t thought about his singing voice
In his book, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote that he’s never actually thought much about his singing voice.
“I’ve been lucky enough not to have to,” he said. “People say to me, ‘Do you use your head voice or your chest voice?’ I say, I’m afraid I don’t know the difference. I haven’t analyzed it.”
Throughout Paul’s decades-long career, he’s used many different sounding voices. There’s a noticeable difference between his singing on “Get Back,” “Helter Skelter,” “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey,” and “I’m Down.” If you listen closely, you can hear who Paul was trying to emulate too.
Paul emulated Little Richard’s singing voice on ‘I’m Down’ and others
In The Lyrics, Paul called “I’m Down” a rock ‘n’ roll screamer and said that the voice belongs to Little Richard, one of his and The Beatles’ heroes. “With the Little Richard thing, you just have to give yourself over to it,” Paul wrote. “You can’t really think about it.”
On one occasion, Paul did think about it too hard during the recording of “Kansas City.” Paul explained, “John had asked me, weeks before, how I did that Little Richard thing. I said, ‘It just comes out the top of my head.’ So I was recording ‘Kansas City’ and having trouble with it because now I’m thinking, ‘This has got to be my best performance ever,’ and I wasn’t doing too well.
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“And John was up in the control room with all the other guys while I was down in the body of the studio doing the vocal, and he walks down for a minute, comes in and whispers in my ear, ‘Comes out the top of your head. Remember?’”
Paul thought of the rock ‘n’ roll pioneer’s singing voice while recording many songs, including “Oh, Darling.” Geoff Emerick, The Beatles’ sound engineer, told Music Radar, “I remember hearing that Paul kept rehearsing the vocal lying on his back, and that he used to come to the studio quite early, before any of the other guys were supposed to be there, just so he could do it over and over again. He was searching for something, a Little Richard vibe perhaps.”
The singer-songwriter admitted to pretending to be Fred Astaire to get his ‘little voice’
In The Lyrics, Paul explained that sometimes when he’s singing, he pretends to be actor and dancer Fred Astaire to get that “little” voice. “It helps me reach a very particular place. Sometimes I’ll be Fats Waller, and that helps me reach a place too,” Paul wrote.
If Paul had to choose anyone, he’d be very happy to be thought of as a channeller of Nat King Cole, Waller, or Astaire. “I don’t think there’s any denying the idea of being a medium,” he added. “I definitely dreamt ‘Yesterday,’ so I’m sure I’ve channelled many other songs.”
Paul also thought of Astaire while recording The Beatles’ “Honey Pie,” “Here, There and Everywhere,” and “I’ll Follow the Sun.”
So, Paul has thought about his singing voice. He’s had to so he could emulate his heroes’ voices.
