Paul McCartney’s Favorite Beatles Song

Paul McCartney is often asked about his favorite Beatles song, and he admits it’s a hard question to answer, but “if pushed,” he admitted recently, it’s “Here, There and Everywhere.”

McCartney named the song as his favorite on a newly released episode of his podcast, McCartney: A Life in Lyrics, going on to explain how Fred Astaire was a partial inspiration for the 1966 track that appeared on Revolver.

“I was a big fan of Fred Astaire, I still am,” he said. “And unlike the studio executives, who thought he could dance a little, has no voice. I always loved his voice, I still do.”

McCartney also explained how he wrote the song one day while waiting for John Lennon to wake up for the day.

READ MORE: Underrated Beatles: The Most Overlooked Song From Each Album

“I would go out to his house for a writing session, and he wasn’t always up,” he said. “So I would often have 20 minutes, half an hour while someone told him I was here, and he would get up. I remember sitting out by his swimming pool in his house in Weybridge, which is a golf suburb of London. I had my guitar because I was ready for the writing session. So we sat out and started something…it just went quite nice and smoothly. So by the time I came to write with John, by the time he deemed to get up and have his coffee, I would have something to go on.”

Listen to the Beatles’ ‘Here, There and Everywhere’

But even then, McCartney said he wasn’t entirely sure the direction the song’s lyrics would take.

“Even when you get lyrics like this, the purpose of the lyric is to support the song rather than be a lyric. It’s quite liberating,” he continued. “You can just experiment as you go along. So things slip out like they would in a session with a psychiatrist…Basically, I always say when I’m writing a song, I’m following a trail of breadcrumbs. Someone’s thrown out these breadcrumbs, and I see the first few, and you just go along, and I feel like I’m following the song rather than writing it.”