This Classic Love Song Held The No. 1 Spot The Longest In 1973

Following the breakup of the Beatles in 1970, each member of the Fab Four embarked on successful and scrutinized solo careers, and they all secured a No. 1 hit. In terms of overall record sales and hit singles in the U.S., Paul McCartney did the best of them all, including an expression of marital love that spent more weeks at the top of the charts than any other love song did in 1973: the sweet and tender "My Love."

McCartney's career was moving along swimmingly in the early 1970s, until he decided that he missed being in a band. McCartney recruited his wife, muse, and sometimes writing partner Linda McCartney, along with several music industry veterans, to form Wings. After a couple of slow starts, "My Love," an inspiring song about the undying nature of love and its unbreakable bonds, and one of the most romantic songs recorded in the long career of Paul McCartney, would dominate music in the summer of 1973.

"My Love" is relaxed and meditative, consisting of four very short verses and many repetitions of the title rather than a standalone chorus. Austere, simply constructed, and slow, McCartney utilized his typical songwriting method: He figured out the chords first, developed a melody from there, and then wrote the lyrics. The key phrase there for the composer was "my love does it good." "A phrase like that is a classic case of the nongrammatical somehow being the perfect choice," McCartney wrote in Paul Muldoon's "The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present." He was inspired by similar approaches in blues songs, the works of Elvis Presley, and the Beatles' "Getting Better," which employed the line, "It can't get no worse." "It's always satisfying to subvert the rules of grammar," McCartney said.

Messing with the English language aside, "My Love" is earnest and unabashedly romantic, and McCartney wrote it for and about another member of Wings. "It's a pure love song to Linda, a reaffirmation of my love for her," McCartney wrote, referring to Linda McCartney. "But, as always, it doesn't just refer to 'My Linda.' It refers to 'My Love' so that other people will be able to relate to it."

And people most definitely related to it. No song spent more than four consecutive weeks atop the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 in 1973. "My Love" enjoyed that year's signature achievement, spending the whole of June 1973 at No. 1, and was the only love song to do so that year.