3 Emotional Folk Masterpieces by Paul McCartney

Even during the height of Beatlemania, Paul McCartney recorded many of his most emotional songs without the Fab Four. These solo pieces reveal the folk roots of his songwriting, but they also leave space for a combination of vivid poetry and confessional vulnerability.

The first two, I imagine, you know well. I started there to highlight with the third track how McCartney wasn’t finished writing masterpieces decades after The Beatles, the early solo albums, or Wings. He may be the closest the pop and rock world has to experiencing Mozart in his lifetime.

“Yesterday”

Some songs almost feel like they are of nature. To me, “Yesterday” is one of those eternal songs. A tune just waiting in the cosmos for Paul McCartney to pluck it from its silence. It’s fitting that “Yesterday” appears on an album called Help!, which is often what we scream as we try to hang on to something or someone we’ve lost.

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away,
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

“Blackbird”

McCartney uses a bird metaphor here as a kind of hope for an oppressed Black woman during the civil rights movement. Musically, he echoes the counterpoint of Johann Sebastian Bach but transforms the bourrée into a lullaby. You can hear McCartney’s foot tapping on the floor to keep time. But it also feels like one is marching forward in solidarity.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night,
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see.
All your life,
You were only waiting for the moment to be free.

“Jenny Wren”

Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich guided McCartney through his 2005 album, Chaos And Creation In The Backyard. But he also challenged the ex-Beatle. Creating the type of friction Macca might have experienced in the studio with John Lennon. It resulted in one of McCartney’s strongest solo efforts in years. “Jenny Wren” is a gorgeous masterpiece that repeats the bird imagery of “Blackbird”.

Like so many girls, Jenny Wren could sing,
But a broken heart took her soul away.
Like the other girls, Jenny Wren took wing,
She could see the world and its foolish ways.

Photo by Robert R. McElroy/Getty Images