There are only so many problems a songwriter can have when quoting their own heart. It’s one thing to be able to make a great song that shows a side of you no one else ever sees, but it’s just as important to create surreal images from time to time that no one realised they needed in their lives. The Beatles had their fair share of absurd and personal lyrics, but Paul McCartney has made an entire career out of being a fiction writer.

Throughout both his Beatle years and his solo career, Macca has been responsible for some of the strangest and most off-the-wall stories that anyone put to tape. Although John Lennon was much better at showcasing an intimate side of himself when reaching songs like ‘Love’ and ‘God’, McCartney was still over there talking about everything from old Western heroes to mild-mannered people living ordinary lives.

While usually, any of these faceless characters would have seemed boring on paper, the melody and the charm McCartney puts into them have made them endure throughout the years. Yes, some of them can be too saccharine for some, but it’s hard to resist them when he puts that one little slice of ear candy into the mix that makes it impossible to leave someone’s head.

So despite him being one of the biggest songwriters of the past half-century, a handful of these tunes show that he’s equally capable of being a novelist should it strike his fancy. Whether it’s a slice-of-life story or just one long surreal tall tale, McCartney has a way of keeping us invested and lingering on every word he says.

Paul McCartney’s best songs about fantasy characters:
5. ‘The Fool on the Hill’ – Magical Mystery Tour
McCartney never claimed to have that many reservations in terms of his writing. Whatever he was thinking about at the time never really took long to make it into a tune, and looking at some of his more surreal pieces, it’s not like he was willing to go for something a bit more existential. When the group started getting interested in the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, though, ‘The Fool on the Hill’ became his facsimile of what the wise sage had to offer.

While the group initially found his work amusing before venturing to India to study transcendental meditation, ‘The Fool on the Hill’ was the first time McCartney covered a character like the guru. Although many people criticised the religious leader for being nothing but a fool, this was McCartney’s argument that people like that are much smarter than they look, even crying out for people who don’t understand when the tune turns dark in the chorus. McCartney might frolic through a field during the sequence in the Magical Mystery Tour film, but the whole point of the song is something else is going on behind those brown eyes.