In a new interview given to British newspaper The Sun—as reported by Rolling Stone—Paul McCartney has given lots of insight into his collaboration with Kanye West, comparing their writing process to McCartney's partnership with John Lennon.
McCartney admitted that before working with West, his initial thought on the project was "Woah, what am I going to get into here." But the collaboration quickly became natural, he told the paper: "When I wrote with John, he would sit down with a guitar. I would sit down. We'd ping-pong till we had a song. [Working with West] was like that."
He also explained how "Only One," which is written from the perspective of Kanye's late mother Donda, was inspired by "Let It Be." "We sat around and talked an awful lot just to break the ice," McCartney said. "One of the stories I told him was about how I happened to have written "Let It Be." My mum came to me in a dream when she'd died years previously. I was in a bit of a state – it was the Sixties and I was overdoing it. In the dream she said, 'Don't worry it's all going to be fine, just let it be.' And I woke up and thought, 'Woah' and wrote the song."
McCartney reports that after he told Kanye this story, Kanye declared "I'm going to write a song with my mum," and so McCartney sat at the piano, and "Only One" came to be.
Photo credit: Inez and Vinoodh
