Paul McCartney can’t get enough of Beyoncé‘s “Blackbird” cover. On Thursday (April 4), the Beatles icon took to social media to show Queen Bey some love with a lengthy missive and express his joy for the “magnificent” rendition of his song. Sir Paul also recalled when he found out that she planned on taking a crack at the historic track.
“I am so happy with Beyoncé’s version of my song ‘Blackbird,’” he typed. “I think she does a magnificent version of it and it reinforces the civil rights message that inspired me to write the song in the first place. I think Beyoncé has done a fab version and would urge anyone who has not heard it yet to check it out. You are going to love it!
“I spoke to her on FaceTime and she thanked me for writing it and letting her do it. I told her the pleasure was all mine and I thought she had done a killer version of the song. When I saw the footage on the television in the early 60s of the black girls being turned away from school, I found it shocking and I can’t believe that still in these days there are places where this kind of thing is happening right now. Anything my song and Beyoncé’s fabulous version can do to ease racial tension would be a great thing and makes me very proud.”
“Blackbird” appears on The Beatles’ 1968 LP, The White Album. McCartney and the late John Lennon wrote the track and were inspired by the plight of the Little Rock Nine in Arkansas.
The rock legend gave insight into how the song was constructed in an interview with GQ. He hoped the song would give the Black girls “a little hope to get through.” McCartney insisted that “Blackbird” be interpreted as “Black girl,” with “bird” being slang for a girl in England.
“I was sitting around with my acoustic guitar, and I’d heard about the Civil Rights troubles that were happening in the 60s in Alabama, Mississippi, Little Rock in particular,” he recalled. “So that was in my mind, and I just thought,’ It would be really good if I could write something that if it ever reached any of the people going through those problems, it might give them a little bit of hope. So I wrote ‘Blackbird.’ In England, a bird is a girl, so I was thinking of a Black girl going through this; now is your time to arise; set yourself free; take these broken wings.”
Beyoncé’s version, stylized as “Blackbiird,” is the second track on her album, COWBOY CARTER. The song features artists many deem the future of country music. Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Tierra Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts sang alongside Bey on the track.
