No one would be foolish enough to turn down songwriting advice from Paul McCartney. The former Beatle has a plethora of hits to his name—both in the band’s discography and his own. He has so many songwriting credits, in fact, that his book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present (which contains his thoughts on his entire discography) had to be split up into two volumes.
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While most of the book consists of behind-the-scenes stories from the writing of each of McCartney’s songs, there are also moments of hard-earned wisdom throughout. Find five McCartney tips you need to apply to your own songwriting, below.
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1. Being self-taught has its merits
Though The Beatles were a highly revered force, you can’t chalk up their success to formal training. The group was little more than four boys who loved the blues, getting together, and creating their brand of rock magic. According to McCartney, he feels that informality actually helped the group in the long run.
“With the Beatles, we were always operating on the cusp between being conscious of how a ‘refrain’ contributed to a song and basically having no idea what we were doing,” McCartney writes in The Lyrics. “One of the things I always thought was the secret of the Beatles was that our music was self-taught. We weren’t able to read music or write it down, so we just made it up. There’s a certain joy that comes into your stuff if you didn’t [try] to make it happen.”
While, of course, formal training can give one undeniable chops, finding your way in music is a path taken even by major rock icons.
2. It helps to evoke different artists
The writing process is different for every musician. Everyone has their little tips and tricks. McCartney seems to be looking at his music through the lens of other artists. While writing about “The Long and Winding Road,” the former Beatle says, “There’s always someone else you can invoke.”
According to McCartney, this practice helps to take “away a lot of the anxiety” that comes along with writing music. “It frees you up,” he writes. In the end, though you put on the mask of another artist (in the case of this song it was Ray Charles), you’ll find it was your song all along: “The song takes on its own character.”
3. Don’t be afraid to subvert the rules of grammar
Though many songwriters will tell you to “keep it conversational,” that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to abide by the rules of grammar. “I often think of Elvis Presley’s double negative in You ain’t nothing but a hound dog,” McCartney says in his advice. “The double negative is so effective because it sounds like people speaking in their day-to-day lives.”
McCartney provides an example of cutting grammatical corners with his song, “My Love.” The titular refrain My love does it good would quickly be marked out by a red pen in school, nevertheless, it works like a charm in this McCartney hit.
4. Don’t be afraid of conventionalities
We love it when an artist experiments, but that doesn’t immediately equal a successful song. In “Silly Love Songs,” McCartney begs the question What’s wrong with that? The “That” in question is writing an abundance of songs about love. Every artist flirts with the idea of romance in their music. Whether it’s falling in love or falling out of love, the topic has been well fleshed out across music history.
Nevertheless, McCartney says, “Love is a staggeringly important word, and a staggeringly important feeling, because it’s going on everywhere, in the whole of existence, right now.” Take it from Macca, don’t be afraid of conventionalities, they’re common for a reason.
5. Let it come to you
Last, but certainly not least, we have the age-old advice of not forcing anything to happen. Anyone can learn the tenets of songwriting, but not everyone can write a successful song. There will always be that magic, almost otherworldly element that is hard to define or predict. McCartney says to submit to that process and make peace with letting things happen as they happen.
“It’s part of the magic about writing songs that things just fall into your lap,” McCartney writes. “When it falls out sweetly like that you feel very lucky, very blessed. You often hear composers say, ‘It just came to me.’ You [learn] how to allow cadences and rhythms and rhymes to come to you.”
Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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