The 15 Best Paul McCartney Songs From the 21st Century

Paul McCartney entered the 21st Century while in his late 50s, an age when most people are coasting toward retirement. The former Beatles star had certainly earned it.

He’d been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the Beatles more than a decade earlier. He’d just joined them as a solo act, celebrating a blockbuster era that already spanned some 30 years. Wings had been broken up for 20. The legacy was set in stone.

Yet, since 2000, McCartney has issued another seven rock albums – including Electric Arguments, his 2008 collaboration with Martin “Youth” Glover as the Fireman. All but one of his solo records (2001’s patchy Driving Rain) reached the U.S. Top 10.

READ MORE: Top 10 Wings Songs

In 2018, Egypt Station became McCartney’s first Billboard charttopper since the early ’80s. McCartney III just missed at No. 2 in 2020. Both 2005’s Chaos and Creation in the Backyard and 2007’s Memory Almost Full were certified gold. McCartney even scored yet another multi-platinum single a couple of years after 2013’s New with “FourFiveSeconds” alongside Rihanna and Kanye West.

Laurels? What laurels?

Along the way, McCartney added 15 key tracks to a list of keepsake gems that already stretched back several decades. Here’s a list of the best Paul McCartney songs from the 21st Century:

No. 15. “I Can Bet”
From: New (2013)

McCartney makes a very successful pass at Wings’ sound but within a fizzy new musical context: As with most of New, he heavily treats his vocal; there’s also programming and some patched-on loops. In truth, however, McCartney had been appending things to “I Can Bet” for a while. He started with a solo-recorded multi-overdubbed demo, then had touring-band members Rusty Anderson and Wix Wickens contribute guitar and Hammond organ, respectively. But McCartney’s final passes – as he dialed up classic Wurlitzer and a Moog sounds, presumably with producer Giles Martin at Hog Hill Studios – brought this modern construction back around to those mullet-sporting, polyester-wearing days of yore.

No. 14. “Dominoes”
From: Egypt Station (2018)

An endearing career travelogue, “Dominoes” finds McCartney going even further back to reclaim his own considerable legacy in the Beatles. He starts with a lithe acoustic riff that would have been at home on the White Album, then continues to flip through his back pages: There’s the crackling cadence of his ’80s albums, the enveloping background vocal style of his ’70s work, a backward guitar straight out of the ’60s. His lyric, about how one thing can unexpectedly lead to another, underscores this stirring musical journey. “Dominoes” then ends with a delicately conveyed, note-perfect line: “It’s been a blast.“

No. 13. “Spinning on an Axis”
From: Driving Rain (2001)

Driving Rain found McCartney struggling to combine two parts of his craft – a natural inclination toward ornate pop and an interest in lengthier forms. McCartney was also trying to balance the loss of wife Linda with the arrival of a new love. He didn’t get there. In fact, “Spinning on an Axis” became the best thing on this strangely inhibited project by attempting to put all of that aside. McCartney shucks his occasional penchant for overthinking, opening with a loose rumination and then catching – and keeping – a plucky little groove. That gives the song a first-take freshness. Unfortunately, that’s not enough to break the logjam on this often-impenetrable LP. It seems there was simply too much going on inside McCartney’s head.

No. 12. “Fine Line”
From: Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005)

You get the sense that McCartney could write catchy songs like this in his sleep. (And maybe he does?) But that doesn’t make “Fine Line” any less charming – and there’s a cool little quirk buried beneath its radio-ready hook. But first, the Top 20 U.K. hit opens with a telling lyric: “There’s a fine line between recklessness and courage.” McCartney knew something about that, having thrown out his entire way of working for this aptly named LP. The biggest change was hiring Nigel Godrich, best known for producing Radiohead. He’s the one who encouraged McCartney to continue building “Fine Line” around that wrong bass note.

No. 11. “New”
From New (2013)

Maybe the thing that was newest about New was how comfortable McCartney seemed in his own skin again, after a brief period spent singing the Great American Songbook. There are next-gen flourishes, principally in the production style, but thankfully this title track doesn’t feature anything too outside McCartney’s basic musical framework. Rambling along like a tougher “Penny Lane” or a less refined “Got to Get You into My Life,” “New” doesn’t particularly live up to its name — but that’s better than creating a quickly forgotten modern-day curio.

No. 10. “Deep Down”
From: McCartney III (2020)

McCartney still doesn’t know what “Deep Down” is about. He didn’t have to, not with this title-earning groove. Recorded in the maddening isolation of a pandemic-inspired lockdown, III offers McCartney an opportunity to stay within himself in a way that his most recent albums weren’t always brave enough to attempt. Instead of bringing in hired-gun producers to give things a hip new feel, he just rolled tape. That conjures up the unconscious abandon of deep cuts from the White Album and his first solo record, something an artist of his vintage – after so many PR campaigns, so many A&R meetings, so much BS – usually struggles mightily to achieve. Instead, McCartney just lets “Deep Down” discover its truest, freest place. It’s a wonder to hear.

No. 9. “How Kind of You”
From: Chaos and Creation in the Backyard/em> (2005)

Chaos and Creation in the Backyard started out with the producer from McCartney’s last album and a studio setup involving his touring band, before Nigel Godrich arrived and blew it all up. Good thing. Otherwise, we might never have experienced the gorgeous drone of “How Kind of You.” Largely a studio creation, the track began in typical jangle-pop territory as McCartney offered a starkly vulnerable thank you to those who stuck with him through difficult times. Godrich oversaw its transformation, creating an involving music bed that sounds something like an underwater harmonium.

No. 8. “Queenie Eye”
From: New (2013)

What if the Beatles never broke up? By the ’10s, they might have sounded something like “Queenie Eye.” The ruminative orchestral opening, fizzy wordplay, nervy groove and processed vocal point like a streaking arrow back to late-’60s successes with producer George Martin. Yet the production feels completely of the moment. When “Queenie Eye” comes to a momentary pause, it’s as if the dream-state reverie is complete. Then McCartney does what every Beatles trope says he should do: Start all over again, with a swirling chorus of vocals, a banging piano and a second sudden stop.

No. 7. “Anyway”
From: Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005)

There’s a consistency in tone – of quietness, really – about this decidedly serious, mostly solo project that might lead to distraction for those enamored with McCartney’s more obvious quirks. The album-closing ballad “Anyway” solves this issue, ending things on a more expected, orchestral-laden note. Everything feels familiar again, from a refrain that seems to recall the earlier “Little Willow” to a piano signature straight out of “People Get Ready.” That puts a bow on one of the very best McCartney LPs of any era.

No. 6. “Vintage Clothes”
From: Memory Almost Full (2007)

“Vintage Clothes” seemed to tap into the hippie narratives of McCartney’s lengthy first marriage to the late Linda McCartney – and no one could blame him for feeling wistful for that era. Linda died after a cancer battle in the late ’90s, and his next marriage was falling apart by the time McCartney set about completing Memory Almost Full. Certainly, the setup is vintage: McCartney navigates the song’s unusual tempo changes behind a Mellotron, liberated from Abbey Road Studio. In fact, he used the same setting from the “Strawberry Fields Forever” sessions.

No. 5. “Jenny Wren”
From: Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005)

This Grammy-nominated track recalls the finger-picking triumphs of “Blackbird” and “Calico Skies,” allowing McCartney to explore his still-strong upper range on a lyric born of nature. Seems he found himself with a guitar overlooking this picturesque canyon scene. McCartney made an interesting sound, then recalled a character from Charles Dickens – one who shared the name of his favorite bird, a tiny, quite shy species – and allowed the instrument to guide him the rest of the way. “Jenny Wren” was completed later with the addition of an Armenian woodwind called a duduk.

No. 4. “Sun Is Shining”
From: The Fireman’s Electric Arguments (2008)

The Fireman records don’t represent McCartney’s first solo forays into experimental pop; it’s just that the others were typically unfocused vanity projects, self-involved noodlings or simply half-finished demos. Electric Arguments boasted a frisky, yet more controlled spontaneity, as if the original “Get Back” idea had been brought into the indie era. Everything – even a song like “Sun Is Shining,” which in many ways is your typical light-filled McCartney song – feels as if it’s been cuffed around some.

No. 3. “See Your Sunshine”
From: Memory Almost Full (2007)

A canny Wings redo, this is the kind of pure pop that McCartney parlayed into a soundtrack for the decade immediately following the Beatles’ breakup. That’s fitting since he was enduring another split, this time from second wife Heather, during the sessions for Memory Almost Full. In truth, “See Your Sunshine” is part of an ardent project known for its striking musical variety. But let’s face it, McCartney is supposed to sound like this song. That he once again meets that standard during a period of crushing adversity is part of his charm. It always has been.

No. 2. “I Don’t Know”
From: Egypt Station (2018)

McCartney’s first No. 1 album since 1982 opens with this looming sense of doubt, a most surprising emotion from the world’s most famous progenitor of silly love songs. You expect him to be glib, but he instead uncovers something far more revealing in the all-too-rare expression of his own thoughts. These verses, perhaps the bleakest McCartney has ever penned, eventually give way to a gorgeous, more typically consoling chorus. His piano figure is there to guide you along, tracing this brilliant juxtaposition perfectly.

No. 1. “Only Mama Knows”
From: Memory Almost Full (2007)

Embroiled in a very public divorce, Paul McCartney might have been expected to do what Paul McCartney does: hide behind a pastiche pop facade and/or a series of homespun character studies. Certainly, that’s what he did in the aftermath of splits with the Beatles and then Wings. Instead, McCartney plugged in for “Only Mama Knows,” simply bulling his way through gauzy nostalgia. This muscular track went on to become a concert staple for McCartney’s long-standing backup band.

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