Paul McCartney has finally acknowledged what many Beatles fans have long believed – that The Beatles are the greatest band in the universe.
The 83-year-old musician, known for his modesty, previously praised the Everly Brothers as some of the best singer-songwriters of all time. However, in a recent TikTok Q&A session ahead of his new album, McCartney admitted he now feels comfortable saying that The Beatles, consisting of himself, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, probably outshone them.
“It is phenomenal, it is really phenomenal,” McCartney said about the band’s incredible success. “When we started out, we were just kids, and rock and roll was just really coming in. We thought, ‘If we’re lucky, we’ve got a couple of years’ – that’s how long people normally lasted. They couldn’t really sustain much more after that.”
He added that he only expected their music to be played for “maybe five years max.” But that number kept growing. “Then that became 10, and we were kind of still going and the scene’s still there. Then it became 20, then 30, and now it’s right up there. It’s great, it is a lovely feeling.”
McCartney also shared his joy at hearing people tell him that their children love The Beatles. “That’s something, you know, because you can’t indoctrinate [kids], they just either like it or they don’t. I think The Beatles were the greatest band ever. I’m a fan.”
Earlier in his career, McCartney often cited Don and Phil Everly as major influences. He once said: “To this day, I just think they’re the greatest. And they were different. You’d heard barbershop quartets, you’d heard the Beverley Sisters – three girls – you’d all heard that. But just two guys, two good-looking guys? So we idolised them. We wanted to be them.”
McCartney has also spoken about how Peter Jackson’s documentary Get Back, which captures the band during the tense period of recording Let It Be, helped ease some of his long-standing feelings of guilt.
“I had a strange view of that period,” he told the BBC. “It was business hell, and I was blamed for a lot of things. The headline on the front of the papers was, ‘Paul breaks up the Beatles’, and I had to shoulder all of that stuff, even though I knew it wasn’t true.”
For decades, McCartney believed he had been overbearing, but watching the film changed his perspective. “When I saw the film, I thought, ‘Oh, no, I’m not like that at all. I’m trying to make a record. I’m trying to encourage these guys to be as great as they are.’”
McCartney’s latest project, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, is set for release on Friday (29 May).
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