Paul McCartney has written some of the most recognizable songs ever, but of his many timeless anthems, he has a favourite: "Here, There and Everywhere," from the Beatles' 1966 album Revolver. In the latest episode of McCartney: A Life in Lyrics on iHeartPodcasts, he broke down the song, explaining what he likes so much about it.
"I'm often asked what my favourite song I've ever written is, and I don't ever really want to answer it, but if pushed I would go to 'Here, There and Everywhere,'" McCartney said, going on compare the flow of its lyrics to Fred Astaire's "Cheek to Cheek"
"The way ['Cheek to Cheek'] resolves up its own tail, I always found wonderful. And I think somebody said I do it in ['Here, There and Everywhere']," McCartney reflected. Specifically, McCartney likes the way the end of one line blends into the beginning of the next — such as when he sings, "Nobody can deny that there's something there / There, running my hands through her hair."
The podcast's host, Paul Muldoon, compared the structure to an ouroboros — the circular image of a snake eating its own tail. McCartney responded, "Attractive stuff often does that. It often comes back to where it began, and there's a little glee at arriving there. Like you sing, 'Heaven.' Wait a minute, we just started with that, and now we're back there — and very cleverly done, and without me suspecting he was going there. So there's a little thrill when you do that."
He went on to compare the lyrics to a walk through the moors, where suddenly you end up right back where you started. "It's not as if we've gone around in a circle," he said. "It's more magical than that. We've come to another beginning of the path. It's not just like we've run in a circle and just come back to the beginning; that's quite boring. It's this trick where you're suddenly where you were, but it's surprising."
He identified the line "Changing my life with a wave of her hand" as a particular favourite: "I look at those kind of lyrics and think, 'Where did that come from?' It says a lot in a line." Interestingly, the song also includes an overture of sorts, as the opening musical passage never returns.
McCartney wrote the song while sitting next to the pool at John Lennon's house, when he showed up for a joint writing session before Lennon had woken up. Listen to McCartney discuss the song in the episode below.
