Songfacts®:

• "Happy With You" finds Paul McCartney recalling the days he spent getting intoxicated on weed and alcohol.
  
  I sat round all day
  I used to get stoned
  I liked to get wasted
  But these days I don't
  
  Speaking to Mojo, the former Beatle described the song as "candid." "I did used to get stoned and wasted," he said.
  
  McCartney added he particularly indulged on drink and drugs in the period right after The Beatles split up. "I was bummed out and in the middle of this horrendous s--t where someone was going to take every penny we'd ever made," he explained. "That wasn't easy and led to a very difficult time in my life. I definitely self-medicated there and drank more than I ever had and probably more than I ever have since. But you go through it."
• McCartney admitted to being unhappy, resorting to drink and drugs during this period. He added: "I've got a lot of friends who are sober, 'cause they have to be. Like Ringo, Joe Walsh. Because they just took it too far."
  
  "When we were growing up, everyone would be going to the pub and drinking but mostly it all seemed quite jolly," he continued. "But when I talk to Ringo about it, he says: 'No, if you give me vodka, I would have to finish the bottle.'"
  
  McCartney concluded that "Happy With You" was "empathizing" with his ex-Beatles bandmate, adding that it recalls how they "used to be doing crazy things, but you don't now 'cause you're happy."
• McCartney wrote the song when he was on holiday. He explained in a YouTube video that he "was just noodling around on my guitar, thinking about the days when I had a lot of free time."
  
  He remembered how he "used to just lie around doing nothing all day, getting a bit stoned... busy doing nothing!" So, McCartney came up with a little riff on his guitar and the words for the chorus came to him. "It's a song about growing up," he explained. "You know, there's a period in your life, or in some people's lives, when you're not being as productive or as organized or as disciplined as you may later turn out to be."
• The song was produced by Greg Kurstin, who has also worked with Adele, Sia and Foo Fighters. He told Rolling Stone that it started as "a very simple acoustic song" before McCartney doubled it on electric guitar. "He compressed it on the Fairchild, which was a real Beatles technique," Kurstin explained. "I'm a music nerd, so I love to geek out on stuff like that. It's so fun. And the song has such a simple little melody. I love it."