THE STORY BEHIND THE SONG "ANOTHER DAY", PAUL MCCARTNEY´S DEBUT SOLO SINGLE

Though debut album McCartney had seen the songwriter break out of the shadow of The Beatles, it would be his album Ram that cemented that position. His first solo effort, ‘Another Day’, shows just how far he’d come.

Like much of McCartney and a few choice cuts from Ram, ‘Another Day’ was actually conceived while Macca was still in the band. Written in early 1969, the song first emerged during the Let It Be/Get Back sessions. Perhaps because of the sessions’ tension, the song was shelved as The Beatles tried to regroup.

The track could have easily fit into a Beatles record, however. Built around a similar piano then guitar structure, McCartney’s foundations for the songs, like many of his Fab Four efforts, were rooted in his own imagination. Creating fictional characters for his songs has been a Paul McCartney party trick for some time, with ‘Eleanor Rigby’ being prime example.

‘Another Day’ again drew on Macca’s creative mind to tell the story of a woman living on her own and locked into a mundane daily routine that drains the colour of the city around her. She works all day and comes home to an empty home, instead manifesting “the man of her dreams” who helps to “break the spell.” Denny Seiwell, the drummer on the session, perhaps most accurately describes the song as: “Eleanor Rigby in New York.”

While the track relied heavily on motifs of the past, the songwriting credits were a brand new thing. Credited to “Mr and Mrs McCartney,” the tracks were a bone of contention for the label executives looking to cash in. Lew Grade, the new head of Northern Songs since 1969, saw this development as a deliberate attempt to grab more of the publishing royalties. John Lennon had similarly co-credited Yoko Ono on some of his releases, and his old pal clearly inspired Macca.

“Lew Grade suddenly saw his songwriting concessions,” recalled McCartney, “Which he’s just paid an awful lot of money for, virtually to get hold of John and I – he suddenly saw that I was now claiming that I was writing half of my stuff with Linda, and that if I was writing half of it she was entitled to a pure half of it, no matter whether she was a recognised songwriter or not.

“I didn’t think that that was important: I thought that whoever I worked with, no matter what the method of collaboration was, that person, if they did help me on the song, should have a portion of the song for helping me.”

In 1971, Grade would kick things up a notch as he sued McCartney for a breach of an exclusive rights contract for $1,050,000. The case would never reach court with Grade’s new company ATV signing an exclusive seven-year publishing deal with McCartney Music. As part of the deal, McCartney was also forced into a TV special titled James Paul McCartney, which broadcast in 1973. 

McCartney's commitment to the television project allowed him to retain the second composer's publishing royalties,which otherwise would have been assigned to Grade's company.

"Another Day" became a serious part of Macca’s live repertoire throughout the years and has continued to be included right up until the 21st-century.