Scared

Song facts

My song Scared is about being scared to say “I Love You” to someone.

Paul McCartney

“Scared” is a song from 2013 album “New“, not listed in the track listing of the album, and therefore considered as a “secret” song appearing last on the album:

• On the standard edition of “New“, it is included on the same track as “Road“, the final song of the album.
• On the Deluxe and Collector‘s editions, it is included on the same track as “Get Me Out Of Here“.
• On the Japanese edition, it is included on the same track as “Struggle“.

I started writing these new ones a couple of years ago, when I was first going out with Nancy. I used to ring her up each morning and I knew because of the time difference – she was in New York – that I had a few hours to write something. Then I would ring her up and then say to her, “Do you want to hear a song?” It was a good motivation for me to write something. My song Scared is about being scared to say “I Love You” to someone. I think particularly for guys, it’s not easy to say with conviction, so I was playing with that idea.

Paul McCartney, on UK TV show Daybreak

Out of the blue, I met this girl [Nancy] and we started talking and she happened to say, ‘l knew Linda.’ So that was emotional. I wouldn’t meet, typically, many people who knew Linda, and who knew her during her cancer treatment – and Nancy did. She’s a cancer survivor herself. So it got very deep, very quickly, and it was like, ‘What the hell was that?’ And then I ran into her a couple of more times on the holiday, and we got to know each other and started dating. So the song is about that, about this depth of emotion, of but totally being scared to say or do feeling anything about it. Like a tongue-tied teenager.

Paul McCartney, interview with The Guardian, October 2013

I think it is difficult, maybe for men more than women, to just say ‘l love you’, cause it’s such a loaded statement. It brings with it everything. You don’t to say it just casually and so you’re waiting for your moment and it never comes. So I realized I was kind of scared to say ‘l love you’. Songs are a vehicle for saying what you can’t say in real life often, you know. That’s one of the great things about songs. So I just thought of ‘I’m scared to say I love you.’ Finally I played the song to her. This is me saying finally ‘l love you’. But I did have this feeling that these little birds that I wanted let them free out of a cage, but they just won’t go. They’re just too scared to fly out. Why, I don’t know. In the second verse of that song, ‘the birds’ become ‘the words’, it’s interesting what you allow yourself to do when you write a song. You can take something that you’ve been thinking and you can amplify it or you can say it in a different way, you can mask it, you can be talking about loneliness, you can invent an old lady, you can call her Eleanor Rigby, and that’s your way into that subject. It might well be something you’re feeling yourself.

Paul McCartney, interview with John Wilson, BBC Radio 4, October 2013

Well, I’m just like anybody else, man! You know? You get those moments. I don’t normally write about them; but it’s a good thing to use. I was feeling it, as well. I was newly in love with Nancy, and I was finding it a little difficult to say, ‘l love you.’ Number one, I’m a guy, and that’s a big excuse, I know, but it is a bit true to form… That song is basically about she and l, and the middle eight is about when we met. And we did exactly as I say in the song, we welled up.

Paul McCartney, interview with The Guardian, October 2013

“Scared” has been produced by Giles Martin, one of the four producers who worked on the album “New“.

We tried various things, various arrangements. But to me this had to be just him on his own. Funnily enough, I was talking to Ethan [Jones, one of the other products on “New”] about a thing his dad had said to him, which was ‘When the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, you should just step back’. It’s a great end to the album.

Giles Martin

About the fact “Scared” is an hidden track, Paul has to say:

I think it’s really just a bit of fun. It’s the surprise, it’s because you can do it.

Paul McCartney, interview with Jon Holmes, XFM Breakfast, October 2013

Last updated on May 26, 2019

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