Our Top 10 Paul McCartney Songs

Our Top 10 Paul McCartney Songs Happy 69th birthday to Paul McCartney! With his 60 gold discs and sales of over 100 million singles in the UK alone, the ex-Beatle is the most commercially successful songwriter in pop music history. Post-Beatles, McCartney fronted the band Wings, went out on his own as a solo artist, and composed classical music.

Here are 10 great Paul McCartney songs that will never get old:

‘I Saw Her Standing There’ ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ (originally titled ‘Seventeen’) is the opening track on The Beatles’ debut album, ‘Please Please Me.’ McCartney first came up with the idea for the song while he was driving home from a Beatles’ concert. In the original lyrics, McCartney rhymed ‘Seventeen’ with ‘Beauty queen’, but John Lennon laughed when he heard that line and made his band mate change it to “if you know what I mean.”

‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ Back when The Beatles’ were only experiencing success in Europe, their manager Brian Epstein encouraged McCartney and Lennon to write something that would also strike a chord with American listeners. The band mates then composed this song together in McCartney’s basement. Released in 1963, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ was The Beatles’ first number one hit and later became their best-selling single worldwide.

‘Michelle’ This love ballad written mainly by McCartney was featured on The Beatles’ album ‘Rubber Soul’. When composing ‘Michelle’, McCartney thought the song’s style had sort of a French feel—he asked Jan Vaughan, a French teacher and the wife of his old friend, for a French name and phrase that rhymed with it. She came up with “Michelle, ma belle.” ‘Michelle’ won the Grammy for Song of the Year in 1967 and has been interpreted by more artists than any other pop song.

‘Penny Lane’ The inspiration for this Beatles’ hit all began with a street sign. McCartney and Lennon used to meet at Penny Lane junction in Liverpool to catch a bus into the city. This very street has become an iconic landmark to Beatles’ fans. The song ‘Penny Lane’ was released in 1967—in 2004, it made ‘Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

‘The Long And Winding Road’ As tension grew among them Beatles’ band members, McCartney found solace at his farm in Scotland, where he wrote the elegiac ‘The Long And Winding Road’. “I have always found inspiration in the calm beauty of Scotland and again it proved the place where I found inspiration,” McCartney said. The song was released in May of 1970 on the album ‘Let It Be’ and became the band’s 20th and last No. 1 hit in the U.S.

‘Let It Be’ Released in 1970 on an album with the same name, this was the last single The Beatles put out before McCartney announced that he was leaving the band. McCartney wrote the song after a dream he had about his mother who died of cancer when McCartney was only fourteen. She was the inspiration for the “Mother Mary” lyric.

‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ First released on his solo album ‘McCartney’ in 1970, ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ is one of McCartney’s most memorable love songs. He dedicated the song to his wife Linda who he said helped him get through The Beatles’ difficult break-up. McCartney played all of the piano, guitars and drums on the track.

‘Band On The Run’ ‘Band On The Run’ was released in 1974 on the McCartney & Wings’ album by the same name and sold one million copies in just the U.S. that year. The track is comprised of a three-part structure that tells the story of a band confined in prison who later escape and hit the ground running. The classic song hit No. 3 on the UK Billboard charts and No. 1 in the U.S.

‘Silly Love Songs’ McCartney was often chided by music critics for writing cheesy, lightweight love songs. His response? Writing an intentionally cheesy song that sold over one million copies and was certified Gold. ‘Silly Love Songs’ was released as a single in 1976 on the Wings’ album, ‘Wings at the Speed of Sound’.

‘Dance Tonight’ McCartney’s latest single, ‘Dance Tonight’, was the opening track on his album ‘Memory Almost Full’. The song was released in the UK on June 18th, 2007 for McCartney's 65th birthday and debuted at No. 34 on the UK Singles Chart.

The music video features Natalie Portman, Mackenzie Cook and a mandolin that McCartney purchased himself in London. Whenever McCartney played that very mandolin, his three-year-old daughter Beatrice would start dancing—McCartney said that the song basically “wrote itself.” In 2008, ‘Dance Tonight’ earned him a Grammy nomination for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.



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