Promise to You Girl

Song facts

“Promise To You Girl” is a track from Paul McCartney’s 2005 album “Chaos And Creation In The Backyard“. From an interview of Paul McCartney by Gary Crowley:

How did Promise to you Girl develop?

It started as a piano thing.  You know, I just wanted to …  It’s a little two part piano thing.  The right hand is doing the melody a bit and then the bass has got a definite part instead of just vamping away so it was just like a little mathematical problem trying to work out how I could do this and I just started singing it, (sings) ‘Gave my promise to you, girl. I don’t wanna take it back.’  And then it kind of went like a Motown thing, for me, started to go like a, I could hear tambourines and Chooka, chooka, chooka, chooka, I could hear the Motown guys, the Funk Brothers putting a backing track to that.  ‘You and me, side by side, we know how to save the world.’ Actually, originally, it wasn’t, that was slightly less positive.  I can’t remember what it was, but it wasn’t, ‘we know how to save the world.’  Anyway, so it just developed, went through that little Motowny thing.  (Sings) ‘That is why I gave my promise to you girl,’ second verse, diddly, diddly der. Then I had this other little bit that is on the front of it, (sings) ‘Looking through the backyard of my life, Time to sweep the fallen leaves away, Gave my promise to you girl.’  And that ends it as well.  It’s really two little songs put together and then when we came to do it in the studio it was multi-layered because it was just me so I think I started off with the piano and then put a bass on it, put a bit of drums on it and then Nigel started encouraging me to play some guitar licks and things so that was quite complicated, all a lot of little bits, but I think it sounds like a band in the end, you know.

Paul McCartney – from 2005 UK promotional-only interview CD, recorded July 2005 at Air Studios in London

Last updated on January 17, 2021

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