Paul McCartney has named ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ as his favourite Beatles song.
The track featured on the Fab Four’s 1966 album, Revolver, and went onto be named as the 4th greatest song of all time, according to Mojo magazine in 2000.
‘Here, There and Everywhere’ has been credited to McCartney and John Lennon.
Speaking on his podcast: McCartney: A Life in Lyrics, the music icon admitted that he is often asked about his favourite Beatles track, admitting that it is a hard one to answer, but “if pushed”, he would pick ‘Here, There and Everywhere’.
“I always loved his voice. I still do”
On a newly released episode of his podcast, Paul McCartney revealed that Fred Astaire also partially inspired the 1996 hit.
“I was a big fan of Fred Astaire, I still am,” he explained. “And unlike the studio executives, who thought he could dance a little, has no voice. I always loved his voice, I still do”.
McCartney went on to reveal that he wrote the song in one day, while waiting for John Lennon to wake up for the day.
“I would go out to his house for a writing session, and he wasn’t always up,” he stated.
“So 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”.
The musician continued, “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”.
“quite liberating”
Reflecting back on the track, Paul McCartney also admitted that he was unsure about the direction that the song would take.
“Even when you get lyrics like this, the purpose of the lyric is to support the song rather than be a lyric. It’s quite liberating,” he added.
“You can just experiment as you go along. So things slip out like they would in a session with a psychiatrist…Basically, I always say when I’m writing a song, I’m following a trail of breadcrumbs. Someone’s thrown out these breadcrumbs, and I see the first few, and you just go along, and I feel like I’m following the song rather than writing it”.
Last month, Paul McCartney also discussed the inspiration behind one of his famous tracks’ ‘Yesterday’. More on that from Nova here.
