Whether delivering a raw howl or a slightly nasal croon, Paul McCartney has spent his entire career experimenting with the different colors and timbres of his voice, and the Beatles’ 1966 track “Here, There, and Everywhere” is no exception. But instead of pulling from his personal vocal color palette, McCartney would later say he was trying to emulate an iconic female singer of the time.
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McCartney’s imitation wasn’t enough to let listeners in on the fact that he was doing an impression of a female singer. However, it was the right mental note for McCartney to lighten his voice in a pseudo-falsetto for the love ballad.
Paul McCartney Emulated This Singer in “Here, There, and Everywhere”
Paul McCartney has been outspoken about his love of the Beach Boys’ 1966 track “God Only Knows” off Pet Sounds. The former Beatle has stated on numerous occasions that he believes the Beach Boys’ tune is one of the greatest songs of all time and cited it as a major influence for the Beatles’ “Here, There, and Everywhere,” released that same year. But Brian Wilson wasn’t the only popular artist of the mid-1960s that McCartney was trying to emulate.
“When I sang [the song] in the studio, I remember thinking, I’ll sing it like Marianne Faithfull,” McCartney later told Barry Miles in his book Many Years From Now. “Something no one would ever know. You get these little things in your mind. You think, ‘I’ll sing it like James Brown might.’ But of course, it’s always you that sings it. But in your head, there’s a little James Brown for that session.”
“If you can’t think how to sing the thing,” McCartney continued, “that’s always a good clue. Imagine Aretha Franklin to come and sing it. Ray Charles is going to sing it. So, that one was a little voice. I used an almost falsetto voice [to create] my Marianne Faithfull impression.”
The Song Made A Strong Impression On Another Beatle
The sunny, contemplative love song from Revolver mirrors its idyllic origins. In Many Years From Now, Paul McCartney recalled coming up with the bare bones of “Here, There, and Everywhere” while sitting by the pool. His bandmate, John Lennon, was dozing off in a sunchair beside him. “I think by the time he’d woken up, I had pretty much written the song. So, we took it indoors and finished it up.”
Unsurprisingly, given the long-standing songwriting partnership between McCartney and Lennon, the former Beatle assumes that Lennon likely helped him with a few words of the song. McCartney, however, was the primary writer, and Lennon had no qualms admitting that. Years after its release, Lennon called the track “Paul’s song completely” and “one of my favorite songs of the Beatles.”
That was a sentiment Lennon had held for quite some time. McCartney recalled returning to his hotel room with Lennon following a long day of filming Help! in Obertauern, Austria. The duo listened to demo tapes of their new songs while they changed and got ready to retire for the evening when “Here, There, and Everywhere” started playing. “I remember John saying, ‘You know, I probably like that better than any of my songs on the tape,’” McCartney said in Anthology. “Coming from John, that was high praise indeed.
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