Paul McCartney - Ripples in a Pond

Paul McCartney is a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer whose career spans more than six decades. As a member of The Beatles and later Wings and then with his own solo albums, he’s simply one of the most influential artists of all time. He has more accolades than I have time to list in this intro. But if you’re listening to this, you already know all that. In May 2026, he released his twentieth solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane. He co-produced it with Andrew Watt, who won the 2021 Grammy for Producer of the Year, and whose credits include working with Lady Gaga, The Rolling Stones, Justin Bieber, and Elton John. For this episode, I spoke to Paul McCartney about how he wrote and recorded his song "Ripples in a Pond." For more info, visit songexploder.net/paul-mccartney https://songexploder.net/paul-mccartney.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and, piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

• 0:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm going to be on tour, playing some shows this fall. I'm going to be in London on Wednesday, November 18. I'm going to be performing solo at Rough Trade Records on Denmark Street, and I'm going to be in conversation about my music moderated by one of my favorite actors and writers, Matthew Bainton. And a ticket to the show also gets you a copy of my album on vinyl or CD. And in December, I'm going to be on tour supporting S. Carry. We're going to be playing a bunch of shows in the Northeast US. So I hope to see you in one of those places. You can find all the details and get links to tickets at songexploder.net/live. That's songexploder.net/live.

• 0:55Speaker 01

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• 1:26Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 2:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 2:31Speaker 02

  Hi, Rishi.

• 2:32Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Hi, so nice to meet you.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  And is it pronounced Rishi?

• 2:36Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Rishi, yes.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Rishi?

• 2:37Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yes.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  The H is just there to fool people.

• 2:41Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Exactly. Could you introduce yourself?

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Hi, this is Paul McCartney, and I'm on Song Exploder.

• 2:51Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Paul McCartney is a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer whose career spans more than six decades as a member of The Beatles and later Wings, and then his own solo albums. He's simply one of the most influential artists of all time. He has more accolades than I have time to list in this intro, but if you're listening to this, you already know all that. In May 2026, he released his 20th solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane. He co-produced it with Andrew Watt, who won the 2021 Grammy for Producer of the Year and whose credits include working with Lady Gaga, The Rolling Stones, Justin Bieber and Elton John. For this episode, I spoke to Paul McCartney about his new song, Ripples in a Pond.

• 3:54Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Where were you when the first bit of this idea for this song came to you?

• 3:58Speaker 02

  I was in East Sussex, England, on my farm where I live, sitting around enjoying a day off. And that's normally when I write songs. If I'm lucky enough to know that I've got the next three or four hours and nobody's going to interrupt me. And I was actually thinking about my missus, Nancy.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  And thinking, you know, how lucky I am to know and love someone like her. We've known each other quite a long time and it's a very interesting relationship. We're nothing like each other.

• 4:41Hrishikesh Hirway?

  How so?

• 4:42Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm English, she's American. She's very practical, get things done. I'm much more sort of whimsical. I will get things done, but in maybe not as practical a way. But we know each other and we know how to be with each other. So I was just thinking about how blessed I am. You know, anyone who's in a good relationship with someone is inevitably really blessed. And it's nice when you're thinking that to introduce that idea into a song. And I'm often just sitting around with a guitar.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  If I find a couple of nice chords,

• 5:33Speaker 02

  then I'll strum them and see if it leads me anywhere. That's the process for me is doing the chords.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  But then like almost immediately, I will try and block it out with words, even if it's nonsense. It at least shows you where you want the song to go. I mean, for instance, years and years ago with the Beatles, I had dreamed the melody to Yesterday and I didn't have any words to it. So I I blocked it out by singing scrambled eggs. Oh my baby, I love your legs. So we had scrambled eggs and legs, but at least it helped me remember it. So you sometimes do that. And so after I'd sort of found some chords on the guitar,

• 6:29Speaker 02

  I often then will see what happens when I put it on the piano. And this actually worked better on the piano.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  The way the chords seem to me to sing a bit more. Sometimes I get the feeling that you're good for me. Sometimes I'm stressed.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  My mind's a little bit sometimes hard to see. And it's more than best. That was a very early, early version. I didn't have the lyrics ironed out, but I had the feeling. You tell me that you'd like to know what's going on. I thought you'd guessed.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  Before you think that something's going wrong, I'd like to get off my chest. I love you more than I ever did before. A feeling of old and gross.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  But I explained that I'd do it all again. I go through that someone knows. Leave that none. That someone knows. So that was what it was. I was now fishing around. I call it fishing, you know, just fishing around. See what might come. Because I don't know. I don't know this song. Nobody knows this song till I've written it. So it's nice. It's a sort of quest. It's like following a trail of breadcrumbs in the woods. You're not quite sure where it's going to lead, but it's fun just to see if it reaches a good place.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  Reaching out to the universe. Reaching out to the universe. Painting up the sky.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  Hey, hey, yeah, babe. So that's the process really. I, you know, do the little demo. And then if I'm at the studio, I will then say to Steve, my engineer, I've got this song, you know, let's try and put it down.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  So we'll try and make something a bit more of it. But it's still not concentrating on making the record.

• 9:26Hrishikesh Hirway?

  In this version, it sounded like it might be a live recording with other musicians. Is that right? Or is this you playing everything?

• 9:33Speaker 02

  No, that was me. A lot of stuff on this album is me. You know, piano, vocal and drums. I'm putting a bass in and enjoying myself.

• 9:45Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This is from 2015 and you've had albums come out since then. How come this song didn't appear on those earlier records? Did it feel like it wasn't finished yet?

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's the thing. You know, you, you sometimes will write a thing and be not entirely convinced. So you kind of put it a little bit on the back shelf. You know, songs can just lay around and I'm meaning to finish them. But I just, I'm on tour somewhere, you know? So I don't really have the time to get to grips with it. But yeah, this one languished around a little bit.

• 10:36Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I can see that in these versions, you kind of go back and forth between whether you're singing to you or whether you're singing about her. Was that something you debated for a while?

• 10:47Speaker 02

  I debated it for a little while because you do. Doing anything creative, you're always thinking, should I do that or do this? But I had to make the decision. Am I going to tell this song directly to Nancy? Or am I going to tell this to a friend and say, you know, sometimes I think of her. But pretty soon afterwards, I thought it's not direct enough. I think I'd rather have it coming directly from me to her.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  So I changed all the she's and hers to you and yours.

• 11:45Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I was wondering where the phrase ripples in a pond came from, how that came to you and what that means to you.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  I like the ripples in a pond idea because it's a good image for me. For instance, if people pray, the idea is that you pray and it creates ripples and it goes and it reaches the deity you're praying to. I like the idea of saying something and it ripples out into the universe. And I like the idea in a romance of saying, let's see how far it goes. Because you can't plan it. You can hope it's going to work. You can hope it's going to work out well. But there is an element of guesswork where you're just saying, you know,

• 12:37Speaker 02

  fingers crossed. Hey, Richard, I'll tell you one thing. You're making me think more about this song than I've ever thought about any song ever. My gosh. But anyway, it's fun.

• 12:53Hrishikesh Hirway?

  My conversation with Paul McCartney continues after this.

• 13:02Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 13:46Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 14:06Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So the next version of the song that I have is a recording from 2022, seven years later.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  This is quite a stretched out affair. I must say, I never realized that it's been that long between, you know, attempts. But, you know, one of the nice things about this kind of recording, as opposed to in the old days, we pretty much had to just write the song, learn it, record it, thank you, good night. But this way, you can mess around and you can try various things. So I know there's a trumpet solo.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  But I think we just decided to leave that off the record and just replace it with guitar.

• 15:28Hrishikesh Hirway?

  How did you first meet Andrew Watt, your co-producer on the album, before you started working together?

• 15:33Speaker 02

  Well, I met him in LA. My manager said to me, there's this guy called Andrew Watt. And I said, yeah, I've heard of him. I liked some of the music he'd done, but I didn't know him. He said, would you like to meet him? Said, yeah, sure, you know. I said, I'll just go and have a cup of tea or something. But I didn't particularly think we'll work together. I thought, let's just see if we like each other.

• 16:01Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Hmm.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  So I went over to his studio, which was in the basement of Charlie Chaplin's old house. And we're sitting around chatting. I started to show a couple of ideas and just in general conversation. He followed on and so we just were sitting there throwing ideas around. And we were writing the first song on the album. That was it. We just met, cup of tea, and a song appeared. It's kind of lucky, really.

• 16:36Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I can't imagine just the sheer number of people who want to collaborate with you in some kind of way and have wanted to collaborate with you over the years. Is it complicated for you at all to let someone else in to your music?

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so, because, you know, working with John Lennon was something that happened when we were kids. Neither of us really knew how to write songs, so it just grew organically. And because John and I had such a natural relationship that had matured together, I'm inevitably comparing whoever the next person is I'm writing with. And as time went on and the Beatles broke up and I was no longer writing with John, I did try working with a couple of other people. But yeah, you're right, that having worked with John,

• 17:36Speaker 02

  and now for someone to just come into the room, we don't necessarily know much about each other. That does make it a bit harder, I must admit.

• 17:46Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So was it hard to then go from that casual conversation with Andrew and working on music with him to formally ask him to work on the production of the album?

• 17:58Speaker 02

  I don't think I ever did. I'd enjoyed the experience of writing the first track. So I think it was just like, yeah, okay, what are you doing next Thursday? We just kept on, got our diaries out and found the next date and picked it up.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  I brought this song over and I said, "Let's finish it up, because I think this could work on the album." But on this track, I said to him in the studio, I said, "Andrew, look, one of the reasons I got with you is because you're a pop producer, and I'm waiting for you to pop these songs up. What are you gonna do with them, you know, are you gonna..." And he said, "Well, no, I'm just letting you lead the song." I said, "Well, you shouldn't, on this one particularly. I think that you should just do your thing on it." And he said, "You sure?" I said, "Yeah, really, you know, I thought the song could take that kind of treatment,

• 19:04Speaker 02

  produce songs that was right in your face. Do what you would do with this song, and don't even think about what I would want from it." So he just started cooking.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  His engineer was called Paul, and of course, because I was called Paul, we had to call the other Paul Billy. So he ended up as Billy. But Andrew just started shouting at him, "You have to do that, take that out, don't need to lose that, put that up." And gave it, I think, a little bit more of a pop sensibility, which is kind of what I was looking for.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  We just put a couple of other little things on it. There's a nice little harmony, "I should have guessed", which I think really helped.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  We put those on in L.A.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  I would take a knife, just an ordinary kitchen knife, and play like it's a drumstick, a note on one of the strings on the piano. I'd never done that before, so for this, it was new. And you get a different sound. I like that. I like it. I think the textures, it adds to it.

• 20:49Hrishikesh Hirway?

  In the intro of the song, there's a little thing that happens at the end of the lead guitar part that I wanted to ask you about.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah.

• 21:08Hrishikesh Hirway?

  There's something about that part that just feels, I don't know, I just get such a feeling from it, like it feels joyful.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, if I'm putting the first bit on, I know that I can mess around afterwards and just do something free. Because if we don't like it, we can just not use it, just cut it off. But if we do like it, it can find its way in there. It's just a little something, a little tasty something, you know?

• 21:37Speaker 02

  I'm glad that you get the idea that we're having fun, because that is what it is. And it's also a romantic song for my wife. So I can say to her, "This is about you." In fact, it's funny, I played it for her recently, and I don't think she knew that it was specifically about her. I don't know who she thought it was about, but this was specifically about her. So I thought, you know, it's about time that I finished it up, played it to her, and told her, "This is about you."

• 22:26Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And then what's this sound?

• 22:34Speaker 02

  It's a vocal.

• 22:35Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Really?

• 22:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. I've got a Vox amp that I use mainly for guitar, but it has a tremolo. So if you put a noise through it, a guitar thing is going jo, jo, jo, jo, jo, jo. So again, in the spirit of fishing around for interesting ideas, I've said, let's try putting the vocal through it. So instead of it just going na, na, we put it through that and it went na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  You know, I'm glad that I haven't reached the point where I'm so blasé that I just want to just get on, write a song, record it, go home. I like the process of discovering new sounds and new ideas. And sometimes you hardly hear them till you've heard the song 20 times. And you go, what is that little noise, you know? But I think that's the fun, that's the fascination of it. We made this sound and had fun making it. That's all I want in life.

• 24:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And now here's "Ripples in a Pond" by Paul McCartney in its entirety.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Sometimes I get the feeling you're so good for me I must be blessed My mind says although I sometimes don't agree I know that it's for the best

• 24:28Speaker 02

  You tell me that you like to know what's going on I should have guessed

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Before you think something's going wrong I'd like to get it off my chest

• 24:43Speaker 02

  I love you more than I ever did before The feeling grows and grows

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Let's carry on making ripples in the pond We'll see how far it goes

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Reaching out to the universe Skimming across the sky

• 25:14Speaker 02

  If you say that I've been through worse I'll have to say that's something that I couldn't deny

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Who knows if I ever do enough of you I try my best

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Right now although I leave it up to you I'm gonna get it off my chest

• 25:39Speaker 02

  I love you more than I ever did before The feeling grows and grows Let's carry on making ripples in the pond We'll see how far it goes

• 26:46Hrishikesh Hirway?

  To learn more, visit songexploder.net. Paul McCartney's new album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, is out now. This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Kathleen Smith, Mary Dolan, and Tiger Biscop. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Huge thanks to Steve Orchard for recording Paul McCartney's side of the conversation and for his extensive notes on the recording process. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to hear more from me, you can subscribe to my newsletter. You can find it on the Song Exploder website.

• 27:30Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You can also get a Song Exploder shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. Thanks for listening.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Oh, your name's Rishi Kesh?

• 27:43Hrishikesh Hirway?

  It is, yeah. Rishi Kesh. Yeah, it's my full name.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Ah, I know your village. Radiotopia. From PRX.