Paul McCartney and Wings Look to the Future in “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five”

After The Beatles came to an end, Paul McCartney continued making music with Wings, and they released their second album and most acclaimed album, Band on the Run, in 1973. Its closing track was “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five,” a reference to a year over a decade away.

McCartney began writing the song with the very first line, a common practice for him.

“With a lot of songs I do, the first line is it,” he once explained. “It’s all in the first line, and then you have to go on and write the second line. With ‘Eleanor Rigby’ I had ‘picks up the rice in the church where the wedding has been.’ that was the one big line that started me off on it. With this one it was ‘No one ever left alive in nineteen hundred and eighty-five.’ That’s all I had of that song for months. ‘No one ever left alive in nineteen hundred and eighty… six?’ It wouldn’t have worked!”

Musically, “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five” revisits some moments from earlier in the album, most notably by reprising “Band on the Run.”

A Love Song for the Future

In “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five,” McCartney explores the idea of a love that’s meant to be by envisioning it in the future.

“The idea behind the song is that this is a relationship that was always meant to be,” he explained in The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present. “No one in the distant future is ever going to get my attention, because I’ve got you. But when it was written, 1985 was only twelve years away; it wasn’t the very distant future — only the future in the song. So, this is basically a love song about the future.

In the song’s opening lines, which are repeated throughout the song, McCartney looks ahead to the year 1985 and is confident no woman then will be able to compare to the woman he loves in the present.

Ah, no one ever left alive
In 1985 will ever do
She may be right, she may be fine
She may get love, but she won’t get mine, ’cause I got you

The second verse hints at McCartney’s feeling that 1985 is far away, while also suggesting he never expected to find such a lasting love.

Oh, my mama said the time would come when I would find myself in love with you
I didn’t think, I never dreamed
That I would be around to see it all come true

By referencing the future, McCartney puts a twist on what would otherwise be a straightforward love song, the kind he’s become known for.

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