Your Way

‘Your Way’ is the eighth song on Paul McCartney’s 2001 album Driving Rain.

I just trusted to my instincts. The thing is with a lyric like this on ‘Your Way’ is that people will know what it means. I know what it means. And that’s enough for me. People can pull out lyrics out of context very easily and they can take the piss very easily. So it is a trap you can find yourself heading into of trying to get over-literate, just because you know that someone may quote the line.

McCartney wrote ‘Your Way’ while on holiday in Jamaica in 1999.

‘Your Way’ was a song that I wrote at the same time as I wrote ‘She’s Given Up Talking’, on holiday in Jamaica. It’s got a little country feel to it; it’s the first song with which we tried harmonies with the guys in the band and the nice thing about the guys is they can all sing. That was a real good bonus for me. It’s another one of those that goes up the octave, so in a way it’s a bit like two sides of a personality singing to each other, like a man and a woman – ‘I like it, please don’t take my heart away. It’s happy, where it is, so let it stay’. I haven’t sweated the lyrics on this album, I’ve just sort of let it all come out very naturally. Sometimes you can think you want them to be very poetic and literate and articulate. But on this, because I was remembering the recording method we were using in The Beatles sessions, if you think about it often if you just pull off Beatles lyrics they can seem like nothing – ‘love, love me do, you know I love you’ – but they obviously meant a lot to people. I remember saying to someone, ‘God, what a terrible lyric that is,’ and they said, ‘No, it’s not, don’t get into that, it’s a very simple lyric’ – but anyone wanting complicated literacy would not look to that song to get it. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

‘Your Way’ was recorded by McCartney at Henson Studios in Los Angeles in February 2001, during a three-week block of sessions.

Unusually for the Driving Rain sessions, McCartney played drums on the recording, and guitarist Rusty Anderson switched to bass.

Recorded 18th February 2001 onto 8-track analogue tape then loaded into Logic Audio for overdubs. Paul played Epiphone electric guitar and sang the vocal then overdubbed his Ludwig drum kit and knee slaps. Abe played his drums then overdubbed electronic drums and backing vocals. Rusty played Vox bass guitar then overdubbed pedal steel guitar and backing vocals. Gabe played Hammond organ then overdubbed backing vocals.

McCartney never performed ‘Your Way’ live in concert.