She's Given Up Talking | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

‘She’s Given Up Talking’ is the third song on Paul McCartney’s 2001 album Driving Rain. See more…

The phenomenon of ‘selective mutism’ fascinates me. There’s a family I got to know over the years. I saw them have kids, and I saw the kids grow up, and sometimes I’d give one of the kids a ride on my horse if I was out on my horse.

One day, one of these kids just stopped speaking. In school she wouldn’t speak or answer. The idea that one day someone would just decide not to talk – it’s kind of crazy, but it’s brave. So this is just me imagining what it might be like. ‘Not a dickie bird’ is cockney rhyming slang. We used it in Liverpool. It’s nice to come across that when the previous line is ‘Don’t say a word’…

I didn’t really talk to the girl about her silence, but I talked to her family, and then I said I’d written a song about it. Years later they told me it was just a phase. She’s grown up, and she talks now.