5 Beatles Hits Paul McCartney Has Never Played Since Going Solo

Across his solo career, former Beatle Paul McCartney has never once publicly performed a few of his legendary band's major hit singles. Between 1964 and 1970, the Beatles reached the Hot 100 an impressive 64 times, and the top of that pop chart 20 times – a milestone that has stood well into the 21st century. McCartney composed the vast majority of the band's hits along with guitarist and vocalist John Lennon. Those songs became permanently entrenched in the classic rock canon, and many also went on to be fixtures in McCartney's concert set lists from the 1970s and beyond. For example, "Let It Be," "Hey Jude," "Lady Madonna," and "Yesterday" are among the musician's most frequently performed tunes.

But not all of those smashes stuck around. While McCartney played and sang lead vocals on many of those songs, he's shied away from busting them out in front of a big crowd. Here are a few Beatles hits that McCartney hasn't played live since the Beatles' broke up in 1970.

To be a Beatles fan in the 1960s meant getting to bask in the Fab Four's stellar run on the Hot 100 when Beatlemania broke out. After reaching the top spot on the U.K. chart in late 1963, "She Loves You" became the Beatles' second chart-topper in the U.S., spending two weeks in the No. 1 spot in March 1964, displacing the band's previous smash, "I Want to Hold Your Hand."

Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney together while on a tour of England in 1963, "She Loves You" features both of its composers on lead vocals. The blending of those voices, along with George Harrison's harmonies, is crucial to the sound of the jaunty pop-rock love song, and the finer points of McCartney's signature voice are lost in the final mix. That combination would be very difficult for McCartney to reproduce on a stage by himself or with singers who weren't Beatles. According to Setlist.fm, he's never included it in a post-1970 live show.

The Beatles' eighth overall American No. 1, "Ticket to Ride," occupied the top of the U.S. pop chart for one week in the spring of 1965 as well as ruling the U.K. chart for three weeks during that same season. Despite being one of the most familiar Beatles tunes, Paul McCartney has never performed "Ticket to Ride" at one of his many solo concerts. To be fair, "Ticket to Ride" is not really a McCartney song. He's a credited songwriter, but that's due to a professional agreement that placed "Lennon/McCartney" on every song he or Lennon wrote for the Beatles, alone or together. 

Inspired by various Beatles' experiences hitchhiking to iconic spots in western Europe and enjoying the local flavor in their youth, Lennon composed "Ticket to Ride" by himself, and it was recorded for the soundtrack of the Beatles movie "Help!" The writer of the tune also got to take on the lead singer duties, and that sent McCartney into the background.

In one of the last instances of the Beatles heading up the American pop chart, "Come Together" took over the No. 1 spot for a week in November 1969. In the U.S. and the U.K., the Beatles' own label, Apple Records, initially issued "Come Together" as half of a double-A-side single with the ballad "Something." A bluesy, hard-rocking number that utilizes protest language of the late 1960s as well as baffling, whimsical lyrics like "here come old flat-top / he come grooving up slowly" and "he got monkey finger / he shoot Coca-Cola," "Come Together" was written by John Lennon without the aid of Paul McCartney.

It's one of the songs from 1969 that defined rock history, but "Come Together" has never graced a solo McCartney set list. Oddly enough, "Something," the companion tune of "Come Together," has factored into McCartney concerts. He similarly had little to do with that song, but he's nevertheless performed the George Harrison composition about 500 times over the years.

A melancholy song about struggling for meaning and feeling lost, "Nowhere Man" was one of the most thoughtful songs the Beatles had recorded to date. Fans were on board, though, and in 1966 "Nowhere Man" ascended to a No. 3 position in the U.S. While Paul McCartney added vocals and instrumentation to the song, later included in pressings of the album "Rubber Soul," "Nowhere Man" was a John Lennon solo composition.

"I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down," Lennon told Playboy (via Art of John Lennon). "Then 'Nowhere Man' came, words and music." McCartney understood what his bandmate and friend was going through at the time. "That was John after a night out, with dawn coming up," McCartney recalled of "Nowhere Man" to Playboy (via Far Out). "I think at that point, he was a bit wondering where he was going, and to be truthful so was I. I was starting to worry about him."

McCartney seems to recognize just how personal and tender "Nowhere Man" was for Lennon. In the more than 50 years since the Beatles went their separate ways, McCartney hasn't played that Beatles hit in any of his concerts.

Previously a No. 2 hit on the R&B chart for the Isley Brothers, the Beatles' take on "Twist and Shout" made it to No. 2 on the pop chart in 1964. The Beatles transformed the would-be R&B standard into a rollicking garage-rock banger, and they included it on their first LP, 1963's "Please Please Me," because they were a song short and had only 15 minutes of studio time left. John Lennon led the group in the song, which they had frequently played live. In fact, there's no song the Beatles played in concert more than "Twist and Shout," rolling it out nearly 400 times, according to Setlist.fm. 

After the song nearly topped the charts, the champion and lead singer of "Twist and Shout" didn't want to play it anymore — Lennon thought it embarrassingly misappropriated Black culture. It fell out of the Beatles' live oeuvre, and it never even made it into the Paul McCartney solo canon. As of 2026, he has yet to perform the song live on his own.