McCartney Times

The Beatles wrote a lot of love songs. Other than the pronouns and commonplace words like “I” and “You”, it is the word “Love” that is used most by the band in their lyrics, with over 600 uses across 213 songs. It was the universal topic that anyone could understand, and it’s something that has never aged, contributing to the band’s continued relevance.

But who were those songs specifically about? This is where it tends to get tricky: whether it’s in contemporaneous interviews or in subsequent lookbacks, like in Paul McCartney’s The Lyrics or George Harrison’s I Me Mine, the writers often claim that they didn’t have any articular person in mind when they wrote some of their most legendary love songs.

McCartney, in particular, is relatively dismissive of the idea that he wrote songs about his then-girlfriend, Jane Asher. There are undeniable and verifiable songs that he wrote with the relationship in mind, but some of those tend to be the more pessimistic songs about the ends of relationships, like ‘For No One’ and ‘I’m Looking Through You’. Lennon claims not to have written any love songs specifically for his wife Cynthia but admitted that ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’ was about an affair.