Paul McCartney’s Greatest Song?
Paul McCartney occupies a curious space in 2022. For some he’s become an embarrassment, an old rocker who’s hung around long past his sell by date, on speed dial for the grand occasions when a big name is required to close the show, even if the hair is a suspect shade of brown and the high notes don’t sound quite as they used to.
In other circles McCartney’s having a late career renaissance, finally getting the respect he deserves for his contribution to the Beatles after years of suspicion for having the temerity not to be the one that was shot. It turns out (who knew?!) that many of his songs really are the match of John Lennon’s, or indeed pretty much any composer of the 20th Century. Without him there really would have been fewer Beatles albums to enjoy; yes, he riled the others, but the records got made. Do you seriously want to take sides over who said what to who over five decades later? Confession: at time of writing I haven’t yet seen ‘Get Back’ which seems to be driving this point of view, but it’s an argument that plenty of Fabs biographers have made over several decades.
If you want to be a McCartney detractor, there’s plenty of ammo available — Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, Mull of Kintyre are three that come to mind without particularly thinking — but you’ve got to have very selective ears if that’s the basis for your argument. Penny Lane? “Well obviously I like that one.” Yesterday? “Yeah, that’s good too.” Let It Be? Hey Jude? Got to Get You into My Life? Hello Goodbye? If you must, you can have your reservations about his latter day performances — by the way, he’s not playing just for you — but denying the sheer number of McCartney songs that have found their way into our shared consciousness looks disingenuous at best.
But what’s the greatest one of them all? Perhaps it doesn’t matter, you’re unlikely to find yourself on a desert island with only a recording of one of them for company. But imagine it for a moment. You’ve got one Paul McCartney song to listen to for the rest of your life. Obviously you’ll desperately miss the others, but you have to select one, so what’s it going to be? Will it be a rocker, a straightforward pop song, a ballad, or something else?
If it was me, I’m fairly sure my choice would be She’s Leaving Home. It’s not a song that usually features in the first breath when Beatles fans spout their favourites. When you watch a documentary on the band, it’s unlikely to appear as the accompanying music underneath the narration. It’s not even a song that makes it into the setlist of solo Paul McCartney concerts with any great regularity. Maybe it rarely gets its dues because it’s a downbeat piece from an act we largely celebrate for their exuberance, but as a self-contained piece of art, the melody, words and arrangement combine to form something that’s nigh on perfect.
If you don’t know, She’s Leaving Home describes a teenage girl who runs away without warning, and the reaction of her parents. The song was inspired by a story in the Daily Mirror, though the lyrics were written without further knowledge of how that situation would eventually play out. It’s also notable for being a song where two of the Beatles don’t actually feature at all, though Lennon deserves huge credit for his counter vocals in what passes for a chorus.
What makes it such an affecting piece of music? Like so many great songs, She’s Leaving Home has a cinematic quality, but it’s not the widescreen vision we have when referring to tracks like Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road or The Doors’ Riders on the Storm. Those are songs where everything but the kitchen sink is used to create a lavish production, whereas McCartney’s offering feels like a soundtrack to one of the kitchen sink dramas of the era; it’s understated, it finds meaning in the mundane details of everyday life, it leaves the listener to fill in the gaps in the story by asking what’s not being said. There’s easily enough material in the song’s 32 lines to form the basis of a script, it’s probably the best film that the young Rita Tushingham never made.
What are the motivations of the characters? By the final verse we learn that the daughter is meeting someone, but we don’t know what’s in the note that she left, or whether her lover is who he says he is. We don’t know how she met this man, or if she’ll ever come back. We can probably take the parents’ reaction as genuine, but are their self-justifications accurate, or are they lying to themselves? And the whole story rings true because most of us will recognise something of ourselves or our relatives in these everyday, unnamed characters — “Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown.”
Something that I find particularly fascinating about She’s Leaving Home is that it’s a rare example of a song that challenges your perceptions as you get older. Much music that we love gets its hooks into us in our teens or twenties, and we continue to draw on that as we get older, whether as a reliable friend or simply a nostalgic pleasure. Here though, the core of the song addresses the generation gap, and although over half a century has passed since its recording, the issue is probably as relevant as ever. As a teenage listener I was inclined to side with the daughter, she deserved a chance to take her life where she wanted to go. As a parent I can’t begin to imagine the impact on the mother and father. Paul McCartney didn’t yet have children in 1967 so was writing as a neutral observer, I’d be very interested to know if his own feelings about the song have changed.
We still haven’t even looked at the melody and performance, both of which are again unusual for a Beatles song. Like Yesterday, She’s Leaving Home is far from the raucous rock ’n’ roll with which the band made their name, but rather something closer to classical music in the way the vocal and counter vocal unfold. I’m no musician, but these are far from the simple tunes from which many classic songs derive their strength, and in the same way that the lyrics are more powerful for what they don’t say, the restrained arrangement complements the tone of the story and melody, elevating the song rather than smothering it as Phil Spector would do with other McCartney compositions a couple of years later. The score was famously written by Mike Leander after George Martin was for once unavailable, but it’s difficult to believe that for all his talents, Martin would have done a better job.
It’s doubtful this piece will change anyone’s mind. If you love music you’ve already got a favourite Paul McCartney song, or at least a shortlist where the top choice changes regularly. But as a piece of the Beatles story, She’s Leaving Home rarely gets the recognition it deserves, so doesn’t suffer from over-familiarity in the way that even some of the greatest songs can. At just 3:34 mins, it’s also not going to take you too long to discover or to reacquaint yourself with it. So find your copy of ‘Sgt Pepper’, skip to Track 6, and prepare to listen to Paul McCartney’s most perfect song.