Paul McCartney was never exactly known for being as prolific with his pen as John Lennon was. Whereas Lennon was the intellectual member of The Beatles who liked bending his melody to fit whatever he was singing about, Macca wasn’t above the idea of throwing whatever syllables came out on record and trying to make sense of what it meant after the fact. Although there are still millions of lines to choose from with The Beatles and beyond, McCartney felt that ‘The World Tonight’ is one of the better single lines he ever put to tape.
When McCartney was first cutting Flaming Pie, he was already ready to get back in touch with what made him so irresistible in the first place. Despite spending the last few years making the kind of dad rock that many of his colleagues were doing around then, The Beatles Anthology set him on the right track for where he wanted to go.
After years of trying to outrun the Fab Four, McCartney realised that it might be worthwhile to tackle a set of tunes that reminded him of what it was like being with his old mates. While Jeff Lynne was brought on to produce and Ringo Starr even sat in on drums for a few tracks, ‘The World Tonight’ feels like it’s straddling both worlds when it starts.
Yes, it does have that McCartney whimsy back in full force, but it also has more than a few guitar lines that feel like they’re put in there to satisfy the Eagles fans of the world rather than add to the song. Then again, the focus is always on McCartney, and hearing him sing ‘I go back so far I’m in front of me’ is both nonsensical and adorable at the same time.
While the phrase itself reads like something that an old man would say to his grandkids, trying to make them laugh, it’s actually fairly apt here. McCartney was going back to his past to find out who he was in the present and, in doing so, created some of the sturdiest tracks that he had made in years.
Even decades after the fact, McCartney realised he hit on something potent, writing in The Lyrics, “This song has a line that’s one of my favourites of all the lines I’ve ever written: ‘I go back so far I’m in front of me’. It’s one of those lines where you don’t know what it means, but you do know what it means. I have no idea where it came from, though!”
Granted, just because it’s McCartney’s favourite doesn’t mean that it’s one of the finest lyrics of all time. There will always be the immortal words to ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Hey Jude’, and even in his solo career, the lyrics to ‘Here Today’ for John Lennon are bound to tug on the heartstrings a lot more than this little bit of wordplay.
It’s not exactly the most thought-provoking line ever conceived by man, but it is the most Paul McCartney line he ever put together. It’s a bit philosophical and has a dash of silliness to it, and yet it’s just radiating positivity from the minute that McCartney says it.
