A Paul McCartney Song to Call Your Own

My boyfriend has taken up a new hobby: birdwatching.

What happens is basically this: he goes out for walks with a little bird-call identification app and wanders through different areas, listening for birdsong, spotting species, recording calls, ticking off sightings… I know it sounds like something your retired neighbour does on Sunday mornings, and yes, we are not exactly young anymore (we’re not old either - we’re in that solidly time of our lives a great friend of mine calls post-youth), but it’s genuinely fascinating. Even more so when you consider the fact that my partner is an environmental scientist specialising in ecology.

And now you’re wondering, dear reader, what any of this has to do with Sir Paul McCartney. My answer: absolutely everything.

I’ve joined my partner on a few of these outings. And I — journalist, marketer, and decidedly amateur writer — can identify almost none of the bird sounds around us. Except one. The blackbird.

— Wait, wait… I know that one! That’s a blackbird.
— Are you sure? Let me check…
— Of course I’m sure. That’s definitely a blackbird.
— How do you know?
— Easy. There’s a Beatles song called “Blackbird” that has the actual bird singing in it. That's how I recognised it.
— …yeah, it is a blackbird. Can you send me that song later?

My boyfriend and I have a lot in common, but we also have some spectacular differences. One of them is that roughly 90% of everything he knows about the Beatles - or about Paul - came from me. The other 10% from his father. He's not interested in music as I am, nor a fan of the Beatles. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I was the one who informed him that Paul McCartney has a bit of a thing for birds.

Just look at the discography: Blackbird, Jenny Wren, Two Magpies, Morse Moose and the Grey Goose, Single Pigeon — and several others that don’t have a bird in the title but are very much about birds. The man named his band Wings, people, FFS!

But then I started thinking: it’s no surprise that McCartney has songs about all kinds of animals, given that he’s been a vegetarian and animal rights advocate since the early ‘70s. And with the size of his catalogue, he probably has a song for every single moment in any person’s life.

Because I think of music as the soundtrack to this time we spend in the universe we call life, I decided to challenge myself. Here’s my slightly bizarre, slightly obvious list of five songs for strange moments, all of them written by Sir Paul McCartney.

1 - A pandemic (any pandemic, really): Wings — Band on the Run (1973)

Stuck inside these four walls
Sent inside forever
Never seeing no one nice again
Like yoooou… mama… youuuuu…

Honestly, the entire lyric of this song could closely relate to that period of the pandemic when we were all told to stay home. Here in Ireland, we had a full lockdown, with movement restricted to a specific radius from your house, enforced by law. I know it was wherever you are reading this, but whenever I hear this song, I think of that time. It became part of my pandemic soundtrack.

2 - Falling for the wrong person: The Beatles — You Won’t See Me (1965)

I won’t want to stay
I don’t have much to say
But I get turned away
And you won’t see me

Time after time
You refuse to even listen
I wouldn’t mind
If I knew what I was missing

McCartney has written about forty different songs on this exact theme alone. This one is my favourite of the lot. One of the most absurd things about his genius is that, from very early on, he writes in a way that lets you feel exactly what the other person in the song is feeling. This one is a well of pain and confusion — precisely the state you end up in when you’re in love with someone who couldn’t care less.

3 - Recovering from a hangover: Wings — Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me) (1973)

Three o’clock in the morning
I’m getting ready for bed
It came without a warning
But I’ll be waiting for you baby
So drink to me, drink to my health
You know I can’t drink any more

This one has a very specific origin story. At a dinner, McCartney’s friend Dustin Hoffman challenged him: could he really write a song about anything? When Paul said he could try, Hoffman handed him a copy of Time Magazine he was reading, opened to an article about Pablo Picasso, which quoted the artist’s last words: “Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink anymore.”

What Hoffman didn’t expect was for McCartney to immediately start humming a melody over the words. The song practically wrote itself that evening. I find this story so wonderful that I had to include it — and yes, it’s the perfect hangover soundtrack.

4 - The vegan protest you’re going to next week: Paul McCartney — Looking for Changes (1993)

I saw a rabbit with its eyes full of tears
The lab that owned her had been doing it for years
Why don’t we make them pay for every last eye
That couldn’t cry its own tears

I cried listening to this song the other day. Again. McCartney is completely direct here: animal testing is cruel, unnecessary, and wrong. Thank you, Paul!

5 - You’re not Irish, but you’re very much a fan of Ireland: Wings — Give Ireland Back to the Irish (1972)

Tell me, how would you like it
If on your way to work
You were stopped by Irish soldiers?
Would you lie down, do nothing?
Would you give in, or go berserk?

This song was banned from every radio station in the United Kingdom when it was released. Written during the conflict known as the Troubles — specifically in response to Bloody Sunday — it reflects McCartney’s position as a British man with Irish roots on the war and the question of Irish sovereignty.

His surname says a lot: Mc and Mac are common prefixes in Irish surnames, derived from the Irish mac, meaning “son.” So McCartney essentially means “son of Cartney.” The Irish part of Macca is, suffice to say, not very fond of England.

I could go on. The 2013 album New alone deserves its own post. Appreciate is perfect for when you want to feel elegant learning a second language, and On My Way to Work is the ideal soundtrack for noticing the small beautiful things on your commute. And I haven’t even touched Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005) or the gorgeous Tug of War (1982). The list is endless.

With nearly 70 years of public life and a catalogue that has no real comparison, I’ll leave you with this: do you have a Paul McCartney song to call your own? I hope you do! :)

1 - Paul McCartney, Days We Left Behind: The man is 84 years old. He could have retired twenty years ago and spent his days doing absolutely nothing — and he would have earned it. Instead, he keeps writing, recording, and creating beautiful things like this. His new album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, drops at the end of this month, and I cannot wait. In the meantime, here’s this gorgeous SNL performance to tide you over.

2 - Merlin, the bird app: This is the app I mentioned at the beginning of the post. Beyond identifying birds by their calls, it records the sounds, logs the species you’ve spotted, and even recommends which birds you’re likely to see based on your location. It’s genuinely fun — and weirdly addictive.

3 - Baixa Fidelidade (a Substack newsletter, in Portuguese): If you’re the kind of person who always has music on, loves discovering new artists, gets nostalgic about old favourites, and appreciates someone with a really interesting curatorial eye — you need to meet Anajuts. I had so much fun reading her posts, loved her reflection on David Bowie, and discovered a new obsession through her writing. Trust me on this one.

That’s all from me. Until next time!

Rakky