The 2 Songs Paul McCartney Wishes He Wrote (One’s Understandable, the Other’s Pretty Surprising)

Paul McCartney will go down in history as one of the most prolific, standard-producing songwriters of modern music history, but that doesn’t make him immune to wishing he had written something else. Sure, he could boast songs like “Yesterday”, “Blackbird”, and “Eleanor Rigby”. But what about the songs he wishes he penned?

McCartney revealed two such songs in a 2013 Q&A on X, formerly known as Twitter. One of the songs wasn’t all that surprising, especially considering McCartney’s musical background. But another song he mentioned is a bit of an eyebrow-raiser.

Paul McCartney Listed a Beloved Jazz Standard

One of the songs Paul McCartney mentioned in his Q&A tweet was “My One And Only Love”. Guy Wood and Robert Mellin wrote this jazz standard in 1953, with artists like Frank Sinatra and John Coltrane making it more mainstream in the years that followed. It’s a classic love song with a melody that lilts and sighs, two distinctions that are easily connected to McCartney’s songwriting style.

The fact that McCartney would list a song like this isn’t all that surprising, given the kind of music he listened to as a child. He and his father often listened to 1930s and 40s standards, like “My Valentine” and “I’m Going To Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter”.

This was McCartney’s first musical introduction before artists like Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley made their way across the pond. This is also the framework in which McCartney first started writing music, back when he thought the pinnacle of success would be getting Frank Sinatra to record a version of your song.

He Also Mentioned This 1993 Track From Sting

Paul McCartney picking a song that John Lennon likely would have called “granny s***” sounds pretty on-brand for the Liverpudlian musician. But his other pick for a song he wishes he had written is a bit more surprising: “Fields Of Gold” by Sting. The song by the former Police frontman came out in 1993 on his fourth album, Ten Summoner’s Tales, two decades before McCartney’s tweet.

That McCartney would choose an early-1990s Sting cut as a song he wished he had written is perhaps surprising because of the scope of both musicians’ careers. But even more than that, it wasn’t even a Top 10 hit. The song peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 16 in the United Kingdom. It goes to show that for songwriters who are artists first and businesspeople second, a good song always gets precedence over commercial performance.

Photo by Gerardo Mora/Getty Images

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