Why Paul McCartney Asked Taylor Swift to Sing 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' at Her Wedding
Paul McCartney appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to discuss The Boys of Dungeon Lane (Special Edition), an expanded version of his latest album. The conversation went well beyond the record. It also produced a story about Ringo Starr and a Beatles moment from Taylor Swift's wedding.
The Drum Take That Became a Duet
The special edition adds three previously unreleased songs and a new flip mix of "Home To Us," McCartney's duet with Ringo Starr. The flip mix swaps the original vocal parts between the two surviving Beatles.
According to Noise11's report on the interview, the song almost never came together. McCartney was working with producer Andrew Watt when Ringo went to the studio and recorded some drums. Ringo told McCartney he hoped the recording would become a track. It didn't, and Ringo was "well pissed." Later, McCartney remembered the unused drumming. "Wait a minute. What about that drumming Ringo did? Have you got it still?" he recalled asking Watt. Watt did, and that recording became the starting point for "Home To Us."
A Beatles Song at Taylor Swift's Wedding
The same interview produced a story from Swift's wedding. McCartney said Swift asked him to perform "I Want to Hold Your Hand." He told her she should join him and sing it to her husband. The suggestion turned one of the Beatles' best-known love songs into a personal moment for the couple.
The Long Shadow of the Beatles
McCartney also discussed Wings and the band's relationship to the Beatles. He acknowledged that Wings operated under the enormous shadow of the Beatles. He deliberately avoided performing Beatles material and tried not to write songs that sounded like Beatles songs. That decision made his post-Beatles career harder than it might have been.
That history gives the special edition an odd tension. Here is a solo album expanded with unreleased material and a Ringo duet, and the conversation around it keeps landing on the Beatles. However hard McCartney tried to move past them, they keep pulling him back.