The Beatles undoubtedly changed the world. How many musicians in history can you say that about? It’s a feat that places four working-class lads from Liverpool among the greatest artists in human history. Since then, Paul McCartney has continued to blaze a trail of booming liberation.
We can all be thankful for this blessing because McCartney has never been unaware of the power that comes with his particular pedestal. He proved this in 1967 when 200 million people saw The Beatles play ‘All You Need is Love’ via a ground-breaking satellite link-up. At the time, that wasn’t far from one in 16 people on the entire planet receiving a message of unified peace in one fell swoop of sonic beauty.
Capturing such an audience was an untold feat in human history, and amid tempestuous times, the Fab Four broke through clouds of uncertainty with an assegai of hope and exultation that basked blue skies and Godspeed over a flowery movement we are still positively reeling from to this day. Over half a century on, McCartney asserts: “I still believe that love is all you need. I don’t know a better message than that.”
This typifies the sense of profundity he looks for in the music of his peers, too—if one thing ties together the music he adores, then it’s a sense of ebullience. With that in mind, we’ve decided to curate a list of all the songs that have inspired a legend. From his favourite tracks in the Fab Four’s vast arsenal to his love for the likes of ‘God Only Knows’, these are all the tracks that McCartney has afforded his lauded praise.
And we’ve even wrapped the songs up in a playlist at the foot of the piece. Enjoy.
Paul McCartney’s favourite songs:
The song Paul McCartney calls “the greatest song ever written”
The Beatle once decreed: “‘God Only Knows’ is one of the few songs that reduces me to tears every time I hear it. It’s really just a love song, but it’s brilliantly done. It shows the genius of Brian [Wilson]. I’ve actually performed it with him, and I’m afraid to say that during the soundcheck, I broke down. It was just too much to stand there singing this song that does my head in and to stand there singing it with Brian.”
Of course, things may well have unravelled very much the same if ‘God Only Knows’ didn’t exist, but in the lineage of its legacy, you would have to say that without the song, there would be no Sgt. Peppers and it wasn’t only McCartney who called it the world’s greatest song; even Lennon said when it was released that the “world perked up”. And as Jackson Browne said with a smile, “Imagine a band influencing The Beatles!”
