Eight Beatles Songs Paul McCartney Didn’t Like

Even Paul McCartney, a 19-time Grammy awardee and all-around icon of music, is not above critiquing his own work.

Sometimes he has done so harshly. In 2015, Q magazine asked McCartney about what he considered the worst song he’d ever written. He replied firmly with “Bip Bop” from 1971’s Wild Life. “The lyrics are f—ing awful,” he said.

That song came from McCartney’s solo career, but he also has admitted some misgivings about songs from his time with the Beatles. It’s worth noting that each of the band members were comparatively quite young when they were in the Beatles, and each of them went on to write many more songs, some great, some less so.

All of that to say: there was bound to be some Beatles tracks that McCartney didn’t like, at least in retrospect. The passage of time often sheds new light and perspective on ideas that once seemed brilliant. In the list below, we’re taking a look at eight songs Macca didn’t care for either then or later with the benefit of hindsight.

1. “She Said She Said”
From: Revolver (1966)
“She Said She Said” is a song McCartney doesn’t so much hate as he does harbor a feeling of resentment over it. His recollection to Barry Miles was that he and John Lennon had a huge argument in the studio during the song’s recording sessions, which led to him walking out and never appearing on the final track.

“John brought it in pretty much finished, I think,” he remembered. “I’m not sure but I think it was one of the only Beatle records I never played on. I think we’d had a barney or something and I said, ‘Oh, f–k you!’ and they said, ‘Well, we’ll do it.’ I think George [Harrison] played bass.”

2. “Revolution 9”
From: The White Album (1968)
To be fair, “Revolution 9” is disliked by a lot of people, not just McCartney. He’s credited as a songwriter, but doesn’t appear anywhere on the track as he was literally out of the country when it was recorded and assembled. Speaking with Miles, McCartney subtly addressed how he really felt about such an…avant-garde song.

“‘Revolution 9’ was quite similar to some stuff I’d been doing myself for fun,” he said. “I didn’t think that mine was suitable for release, but John always encouraged me.”

3. “What You’re Doing”
From: Beatles for Sale (1964)

When you are making an album, it’s inevitable that some songs will not be as strong as others, which is essentially how McCartney thought of “What You’re Doing” from 1964’s Beatles for Sale.

“‘What You’re Doing’ was a bit of a filler,” he told Miles. “You sometimes start a song and hope the best bit will arrive by the time you get to the chorus…but sometimes that’s all you get, and I suspect this was one of them. Maybe it’s a better recording than it is a song, some of them are. Sometimes a good recording would enhance the song.”

4. “Every Little Thing”
From: Beatles for Sale (1964)

Turns out, there’s a second Beatles for Sale track that McCartney ultimately found forgettable.

“‘Every Little Thing,’ like most of the stuff I did, was my attempt at the next single,” he said to Miles, explaining that he played it for Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager then, and a few other people. “I played it amongst a few songs; it was something I thought was quite good but it became an album filler rather than the great almighty single. It didn’t have quite what was required.”

5. “Hold Me Tight”
From: With the Beatles (1963)

Here’s another example of McCartney attempting to write a big single and coming up with what he viewed as a “filler” song.

“I can’t remember much about that one,” he later said (via The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions). “Certain songs were just ‘work’ songs, you haven’t got much memory of them. That’s one of them.”

6. “Tell Me What You See”
From: Help! (1965)

“Not awfully memorable,” is how McCartney described “Tell Me What You See,” on which he plays both bass and electric piano. “Not one of the better songs but they did a job, they were very handy for albums or b-sides. You need those kind of sides.”

7. “Little Child”
From: With the Beatles (1963)

“Little Child,” a boogie-woogie sort of song from With the Beatles, is also one McCartney later described as a “work job.”

“‘Little Child’ was another effort of Paul and I to write a song for somebody,” Lennon told David Sheff in 1980. “It was probably Ringo.” In the end, though, Starr didn’t sing the song.

8. “I’m Happy Just to Dance With You”
From: A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

Yes, Harrison sang the lead vocal on “I’m Happy Just to Dance With You,” but it was written specifically for him by McCartney and Lennon. McCartney would later use the word “formula” to describe the making of this song. “The ones that pandered to the fans in truth were our least favorite songs, but they were good,” he said to Miles. “They were good for the time.”