How To Write Like Paul McCartney
Ashley Chittock
James Paul McCartney was brought up by a music-loving father. McCartney Snr was a brass band enthusiast, and from an early age he would immerse his son in music of all disciplines. Not just Big Band and Jazz, but Skiffle too. McCartney's upbringing left him with an innately jazz and soul-oriented musical mind, and this influence is clear in his writing from the start. The jazzy sixth harmony at the end of She Loves You ("yeah, yeah, yeah, yeahhhhhh!") is an early example, subtly making it's way into straightforward pop. Later, McCartney would be far more overt in displaying these influences, Got To Get You Into My Life, Drive My Car, The Word and She Came In Through The Bathroom Window all songs which could be mistaken for soul standards.

A far more intuitive musician than either John or George, McCartney's ideas would occur thick and fast, whole segments of songs forming at once (everyone knows the story of how he dreamed Yesterday, and She's A Woman is said to have been written "on the spot" in the studio). As such, McCartney's writing often meanders through several keys (an extreme example being Step Inside Love), or ambiguously hides between keys (Michelle, The Fool On The Hill), something both lead Beatles were adept at doing. This is frequently used to emphasise emotive changes within the song. Things We Said Today explodes from A minor to A major in the middle eight to accompany the upbeat lyric ("me I'm just the lucky kind..."), creating a physical and metaphorical sense of lift.

If you should sum McCartney's style up in one word it would be; spontaneous. His bass playing was often highly extemporary, something that often irritated George Harrison, who preferred to lengthily muse over the perfect musical solution. His later basslines were extroverted, moving up and down the neck freely in what is often referred to as a "vertical" style. In other terms, this means that McCartney was more focused on melody than harmony, creating refrains born to be hummed along with. This can be heavily contrasted with Lennon's horizontal style, and abrasive form of songwriting typical of Lennon. That however, is for the next article...

That, in short, is Paul. His wide range of influences gave him a musical versatility neither George or John could hope to match. Alone, he is a potent melodist, weaving a tune up and down in scalar intervals. However as a writer he was often prone to single-mindedness in his desire to write the song he envisaged, at the behest of the (sometimes valid) criticisms of others and of the dangers of cliché. Such unilateral songwriting often manifested itself in a desire to emulate his contemporaries and influences. This resulted in what Lennon called "Paul's granny music"; Honey Pie, Ob La Di Ob La Da and Maxwell's Silver Hammer. Your opinion of those songs will depend largely on your opinion of their genres, but they were never strictly Beatles numbers. A particularly cringeworthy example of McCartney taking this too far is You Gave Me The Answer, a song he recorded for Wings's album Venus And Mars.
Write the lyrics for a misc song made in 2013, titled "How To Write Like Paul McCartney", by artist "Ashley Chittock".