Paul McCartney Talks Linda, Lennon and Modern Pop on Amy Poehler’s Podcast

Paul McCartney has given countless interviews across a long career. The one he gave Amy Poehler on the latest episode of her podcast Good Hang runs past an hour and finds him unusually unguarded, which is what makes it worth watching rather than skimming through clips.

Poehler’s preparation does part of that work, and McCartney responds by drifting into subjects he rarely lingers on. He tears up discussing Linda McCartney, describing her attitude toward animals as almost Disney-like. He remembers her picking up a frog in the garden, holding it without hurting it, and telling it that mummy loved it. He also recalls her challenging dinner guests who were eating meat.

The more revealing thread is his relationship to his own catalogue. McCartney calls himself a Beatles fan and says the feeling has grown over time, that hearing an old song returns him to writing it with John Lennon and to the luck of having had that partner. He admits he once wished he had written Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are.”

Contemporary pop gets a cooler response. He calls Billie Eilish cool but says he would not want to have written her songs, noting how many current hits are breakup songs while he is married. Some of it, he adds, is banal, and he mimics a TikTok dance to make the point.

Stella McCartney appears as well, offering a second register to the conversation. Her father supplies his breakfast order, five raspberries exactly, and the detail that he drinks only water in the morning because he is English.