Paul McCartney's Best

John Lennon is on record as complaining about most of Paul McCartney’s songs being “granny music.” He has a point—McCartney can be facile, and can mail it in. He is usually pretty shallow.

But, on the other hand, he can be deep, and when he is deep, he is to my mind as deep or deeper than Lennon. Lennon can be facile too, in a pseudo-intellectual smartass way. When McCartney hits an emotional chord, it seems purer.

Here is my list of his best songs in this sense: not catchy tunes, but true art.

Blackbird 

The Long and Winding Road 

Let It Be 

For No One 

And perhaps almost as good are Penny Lane and Eleanor Rigby.

The secret truth that nobody wants to mention is that these are all religious, Christian, even Catholic, songs.