I recently saw a Letterboxd review of the Beatles documentary, Get Back, that said something along the lines of "your favourite Beatle picks you and that's just how it is." While they were talking about John Lennon, for me that more than applies to Paul McCartney and how much his career and music and life has surprisingly resonated with me. I used to brush him off as nothing more than a prissy old rich man who's never had a hard day in his life, and while there's definetely truth to that, in recent months he's quickly been one of the musicians I resonate with the most.
A couple days ago after writing my last blog post, I was feeling really emotionally heavy as I ended up going in a much darker direction than even I anticipated. It was 10:30, I thought some food might be a good pick-me-up, so I grabbed a frozen chicken patty and some slightly stale bread and made the world's shittiest late night sandwich. I was playing some music hoping it would lighten the mood a bit.
Midway through, I froze. The song "Let It Be" had started playing and it occurred to me that I hadn't heard the song in years (hated it as a kid) and never actually heard the full studio recording. Under the flickering light of my kitchen, my heart started pounding to the beat of the song and I thought it would beat out of my chest. Paul's vocals were a warm hug I had been craving, starving for even. I had never listened long enough to hear the guitar solo, so getting to that point was enough for the song to rip through me and break the dam that was building up for weeks.
I crumpled to my knees and just cried. Then I started to laugh. Who the hell actually gets an emotional reaction out of a song that old and generic? Me, apparently.
Just last night I broke down again at the hopelessness and isolation that I felt was seeping into my life again. A decades long battle with depression makes this a common enough occurrence. I felt numb and miserable and even more numb and miserable at the fact that I was. I put music on hoping for it to be a somber relaxing song, only to put on the wrong playlist and get hit with "All My Loving" which led to a shock that for a moment shook me out of my drowning apathy completely. I let the song play and the charming simplicity of it all soothed me until I fell asleep.
Paul McCartney's song always tend to be like that, I overlooked them throughout my childhood for their simplicity and almost naive simplicity especially compared to John Lennon or George Harrison Songs, yet even as a kid it was always his music that provided the strongest amount of comfort for me. It parallels a lot of my own journey with my own identity and personality.
I was always known to be very naive. A radical sense of hope in the future, a terrible sense of social cues, and an overly friendly disposition was a recipe for disaster in elementary and secondary school. I can count more close friends that manipulated and/or bullied me blatantly than I can count ones that didn't. I needed roughly 8 close friends telling me my ex was a manipulative piece of shit before I finally blocked him for good a couple weeks ago. It's been a lifelong struggle seemingly being far too naive for my own good and immediately jumping back to that, and it's affected how I view myself or how I perceive the way I'm perceived.
I try to be very careful on how I come across, overly aware of my presence thanks to the way my parents taught me to navigate interactions with our vast extended family and also having to completely change my personality around my parents. I know immediately when I'm being infantilized by others (I'm neurodivergent, very short, very "joyous," and transgender so another recipe for disaster) and when I'm being looked down upon or being "too much" and it's forced me to be so much more guarded about being seen as immature or "childish," even when I feel there's nothing wrong with it. I force a laidback appearance, a guarded mask of that same friendliness and over optimism but in a controlled and distant way that was laced in just enough cold cynicism to be taken seriously.
I just doubled down on a harsher edge to whatever softness I had. I was always present and joking around, but very rarely showed the truth of things unless it was an over the top performance of it. It slowly has faded in university, but not fully. I drowned myself in the music I listened to, and rejected anything internally that felt too close to home. To care so deeply was too vulnerable and time and time again it has led to pain and suffering so I try to be so careful in who gets to see the truth, and even then I choose wrong because I can't help but let myself be walked on in the name of good intentions.
Then came the Beatles hyperfixation I've had this year.
Paul McCartney and his granny music, his knit sweaters, his overly optimistic view of the world, his extreme dedication and curiosity to his craft regardless of if it panned out in the end. He was always aware of how he's presented in universities, closed off to the world but always putting his kindest foot forward and always spoke earnestly in every song or story he had.
I wished I could say I was most drawn to George Harrison's music and demeanour, or the soft silliness of Ringo Star, or even the complex glass onion that is John Lennon, but no matter how much I am fascinated by those three and their careers, it was always going to be Paul McCartney.
From "Hey Jude" being the first and only Beatles song to actually bring me to tears as a tween, to watching the movie Yellow Submarine while babysitting my cousins' kids and being stunned into silence as I heard "Eleanor Rigby" for the first time, McCartney's songs have always reached inwards to my core and saw me truly in ways I struggle to ever show without fear or shame anymore. These pieces of whimsical joy feel so opposite to any other musician I loved or was drawn to, and yet they help the most.
On the surface, he still felt like an anomaly. My biggest inspirations growing up were Gerard Way, Hayley Williams, Vic Fuentes, and even Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun of Twenty One Pilots. They got me through the darkest times of my life, pushed me towards to stay alive explicitly, as they never shyied away from the horrors of mental health and in Hayley Williams' case, modern politics in an increasingly terrifying world. They were authentic, they were alternative, they showed it was okay to do something different and not follow the path laid out for me but instead carve my own way by being myself, even if I couldn't always believe it.
Paul McCartney should be the opposite, but for me he's honestly fueled the same thing. Looking at his time in the Beatles or in Wings or as a solo artist and seeing how much of his career was followed by periods of conflict and struggles and yet he kept pushing and making music he wanted to make even if nobody else did. He forced take after take on songs like "Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da" because he saw something there, even if nobody else did and it was even considered by many to be the worst song ever written (including younger me solely because I had to listen to it for hours on repeat during an 8 hour road trip). It doesn't matter if it was cool or succeeded, he followed his own vision. I love the entirety of Ram so much for similar reasons. The album is wacky and experimental by his standards, coming out at such an intense time for the ex-Beatles, and it pulls no punches, absolutely wholeheartedly earnest and incredible from start to finish. Paul always seemed to show his creativity fully in the music, a radical "yes" in an age of apathy. He has a backbone though, he has a true confidence that comes from being fucking Paul McCartney, and that just made him even more aspirational to me.
A few years ago I would've laughed at the idea of openly singing along to his music during troubling times or full on depressive episodes, it would've made me really feel like nothing more than the naive child people seemed to think I was, but it was him and his infectiously catchy songs and earnestly open lyrics that have pulled me out of what has otherwise been a pretty miserable time. It was his music that brings me out of the dark put and reminds me how to enjoy life. I want to doodle on my work again, I want to wear flowery clothes and smile, I want to talk to older strangers while running errands, and I want to believe things will be okay even when it never seems like it will be.
I went to my local pride parade today, all on my own though because my friends had to cancel for work or still being off on family vacations. I was feeling dull after last night, wanted to do nothing else but continue to waste away in my room, but I had "All My Loving" stuck in my head and a video on Paul McCartney's time in Wings on and so somehow that was enough to force me to try. I got dressed and went downtown, sat on a small bench and quietly waited for the parade to start. I was joined by a middle aged cis gay man who was stopping by before going back to his mother and a 80 year old woman who "wasn't of the lifestyle" but was stopping by after church to see her daughter who was the president running the whole event. I was quieter than I might've been otherwise, but I sat with them and heard their stories of this town and their family while the parade went by. It was really nice, it didn't change my life forever, but ut was nice enough to lighten the weight on my shoulders.
I'm not trying to compare myself to one of the greatest songwriters in pop music history, but I can't help but see fragments of myself in Paul McCartney and that alone is comforting and inspiring even when nothing else is. Through his artistic perseverance and softhearted songs, I have relearned the act of staying open and whimsical through even the most horrific of times. Listening to "Tug Of War" in my local cafe, reminiscing on past friends and motivation, but feeling like everything will be okay.
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