In the latest episode of the McCartney: A Life in Lyrics podcast series, Paul McCartney shares the story behind the song he says is his favorite he ever wrote—the 1966 Beatles tune “Here, There and Everywhere.”
The love ballad, which was written mainly, if not entirely, by McCartney, is featured on the Fab Four’s classic album Revolver.
“I’m often asked what my favorite song I’ve ever written is, and I don’t ever really want to answer it,” McCartney explained in an audio interview segment featured in the podcast. “But if pushed, I would go to ‘Here, There and Everywhere.’”
Paul noted that one of the reasons he’s so fond of the tune is the structure of the lyrics, where the end of one verse leads into the start of the next. He pointed out that the way “Here, There and Everywhere” is structured reminds him of a famous 1930s pop standard that was written by the 1930s Irving Berlin.
“One of my favorite songs, because of its structure, is ‘Cheek to Cheek,’ as sung by Fred Astaire,” McCartney said, noting that he loved how the song begins with the lyric “Heaven, I’m in heaven,” and then “resolves up its own tail” to the same line later in the tune.
He added, “I think somebody said I do [the same thing in ‘Here, There and Everywhere.’]”
Another interesting aspect of “Here, There and Everywhere” is its two intro lines, which lyrically and melodically are different from the rest of the song.
“They were to emulate the openings that old songs had,” Paul said. “John [Lennon] and I were fascinated by this idea that in the old days, they did this complete ramble that didn’t appear to be, like, about the song at all.”
Paul recalled that he came up with most of “Here, There and Everywhere” one morning while sitting by the pool at Lennon’s house in the London suburb of Weybridge, while waiting for his bandmate to wake up and join him for a writing session.
Asked whether John Lennon had contributed at all to the song, Paul said he wasn’t sure.
“I suspect he did, but it does sound like something I might have sort of just done by the pool side, and sort of just delivered to him,” he noted, “’cause it doesn’t sound like anyone else is working [on it]. It sounds like one head.”
Not only was “Here, There and Everywhere” McCartney’s favorite song that he wrote, as podcast host Paul Muldoon points out, John cited it as one of his favorite all-time Beatles songs in a 1980 interview with Playboy.
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