You Gave Me The Answer – PaulMcCartney.com Asks...

Last month saw the release of Pure McCartney, a real audio adventure through genre, time and experience... or, more specifically, Paul’s.

We all relate to music in different ways, sometimes it’s the lyrics, or the melody, or just a (hard to describe) feeling that washes over you and the release of Pure McCartney got the office thinking how incredible it is that Paul was younger than some of us when he wrote so many of these classic songs!

If 18 year-old you wrote a song about someone you loved, would you still relate to it now? Would other people? (We can almost feel our toes curling up just thinking about our sixth form poetry!) We definitely relate to some songs differently as adults than we did when we were teens.

So we’ve hi-jacked this month’s ‘You Gave Me The Answer’ to satisfy our own curiosities about the relationship Paul has with his own music, and how this might have altered over time…

A question from PaulMcCartney.com:

“Even though a recording does not change, we’ve found that our relationship to certain songs can often change their meaning as you grow up. For example, you relate to a lyric differently to when you first heard it. Do you ever find your relationship to your own songs altering from what you originally had in mind when you wrote them?”

We met up with Paul a couple of weeks ago to ask him and he explained,

“Yes, that happens all the time! When I wrote ‘Yesterday’, I was in my 20s. So my 'yesterdays' covered quite a small period of time. Now the significance of the song seems even more striking because of the time that has passed since writing it, and the events that have happened in my life. I must admit, I really like this aspect of songwriting and playing.”

We’d never really thought about how long a yesterday might be...

Has your relationship to any of Paul’s songs changed over the years? Let us know in the comments below, and submit your questions to Paul by clicking HERE