Life Can Be Hard

Album: The Boys of Dungeon Lane (2026)
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Songfacts®:

  • "Life Can Be Hard" is Paul McCartney's sweet, old-fashioned love song for his wife, Nancy Shevell. It started taking shape during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, while McCartney and Nancy were staying in the United States with Nancy's niece Marissa, her husband, and their toddler.

    With nowhere to go and plenty of time on his hands, McCartney was working through a notebook of picked riffs and strummed chords, trying to coax a melody into existence. When Marissa's baby toddled over and reached out for the guitar, McCartney turned it into a game, holding down the chords while the baby supplied the strumming. It wasn't a formal songwriting session, but McCartney took it as a sign he was onto something.

    When he started piecing together the lyrics, the line "Life can be hard" popped into his head. His first reaction was that it felt a bit gloomy for a romantic track. "I thought, Oh gosh, that's going to be a downer," he told Mojo magazine. But he quickly found his way to the heart of the song: "Life can be hard. But then that's when we start to put it together again."

    That line became the emotional anchor. As McCartney explained, everybody faces struggles, whether it's health scares, money trouble, or life in general. The key is pushing through and tackling those hurdles together.
  • McCartney has written several love songs for Nancy since they began dating around 2007. His electronic project The Fireman delivered "Lifelong Passion (Sail Away)" near the start of their romance, and "My Valentine" was written for her and performed at their October 2011 wedding. He even captured the jittery uncertainty of their early days on "Scared," a hidden track on his 2013 album New, singing about how tough it can be to express deep feelings with real conviction.
  • Recorded for his 2026 album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, McCartney gave fans a peak at "Life Can Be Hard" in the 2021 documentary series McCartney 3, 2, 1, where he revisited his back catalog with producer Rick Rubin.

    Rubin recognized something timeless in the unfinished track, describing it as "a song that's always been around... one of those songs that feels like it's in the air." Coming from a producer known for making tracks sound like they were dug out of the dirt, that was high praise indeed.

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