The Paul McCartney Lyric That Looked Back to His Pre-Fame Years
When you’ve led a life as storied as Paul McCartney’s, it must be tempting to write every song about the experiences that you’ve had. Although Macca has occasionally dipped into nostalgia in his songs, he mostly keeps that tendency in check.
Interestingly enough, his occasional reminiscences in song often go flying right past his Beatles days. On his 2007 track, “That Was Me”, he looks back with incredulity to his pre-fame youth.
Paul McCartney’s 2007 album Memory Almost Full took a while to reach fruition. McCartney started compiling the songs for it four years earlier, recording bits of it with his touring band. But he shelved the project for a bit to work with producer Nigel Godrich. Those sessions became the acclaimed 2005 album Chaos And Creation In The Backyard.
Coming off that success, McCartney didn’t take too long to dive back into Memory Almost Full. He touched up some of the songs that the band had finished. In addition, he wrote new material to fill out the running order.
Despite the disjointed creative process, he stumbled into one of his most thematically cohesive albums. As the title suggests, many of the songs look back and try to make sense of the past. “That Was Me”, which is part of an album-ending medley of songs, goes way back, as McCartney explained on the album’s promotional website:
“People often say they can remember more from their childhood than they can from a month ago. I think that is a fact of life – I don’t know why. So all I had to do for this song was to think back.” Behind the Lyrics of “That Was Me”
McCartney shapes “That Was Me” as a series of snapshots, ones that he can call up in his mind even when he doesn’t have a picture on which he can rely. He seems to be confiding in his audience, taking them aside to explain to them that this person from such humble beginnings is indeed the guy singing to millions in the present.
Source: americansongwriter.com/Jim Beviglia
