The 1966 album track ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ is often cited as one of Paul McCartney’s greatest single achievements as a songwriter. The song appeared on The Beatles’ 1966 album Revolver and quickly became a fan favourite.
It’s a somewhat understated piece that’s never been exposed to other McCartney masterpieces from the same period, such as ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Eleanor Rigby’. Its lush melody and close harmonies have also managed to put some critics off, with Beatles musicologist Ian McDonald describing its production as “cloying”.
Negative opinions are in the minority, nonetheless. The song’s composer holds it up as one of the compositions he was most proud of, while it was among John Lennon’s favourite Beatles songs. Lennon apparently told McCartney upon listening to his songwriting partner’s demo version, “You know, I probably like that better than any of my songs”.
Given that the song was recorded in June 1966, it’s long been thought that the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds, which was released the previous month, had a direct influence on how McCartney wrote the song. Its rich vocal harmonies and baroque-pop modulations do seem to invoke the sound of The Beach Boys’ greatest LP. McCartney himself confirmed this source of inspiration in a 1990 interview with Beach Boys biographer David Leaf.
So, he wrote it after Pet Sounds?
In fact, the songwriter specified to Leaf that “just the introduction” of ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ takes its cue from The Beach Boys. The style of vocal harmonies and melodic structure actually has more in common with the type of show-tune ballad you might hear in a Fred Astaire musical.
No, the rest of the song precedes the release of Pet Sounds by a whole year. Incredibly, McCartney began writing it during the filming of the second Beatles film Help!, in March 1965. He was only 22 years old at the time but was already maturing into an accomplished songwriter.
At the time, the band were shooting scenes from the movie in the Austrian ski resort town of Obertauern. “John and I shared a room and we were taking off our heavy ski boots after a day’s filming,” McCartney recalled in the Anthology documentary. “Ready to have a shower and get ready for the nice bit, the evening meal and the drinks. We were playing a cassette of our new recordings and my song ‘Here, There And Everywhere’ was on.”
It’s Lennon’s excited reaction and effusive praise for the song that made this memory stick in its writer’s mind. McCartney looked up to his bandmate, who was notoriously hard to please when it came to perfecting one of their compositions. If Lennon approved of a song on first listen, he knew he was onto a winner. “Yes! He likes it!” McCartney remembered thinking in a 2018 interview with the Independent.
This memory led him to include the song’s original handwritten lyrics in an exhibition at the British Library back in 2021. No doubt his old songwriter would have approved of his choice.
