Quote Of The Day By Paul McCartney: 'Being A Teenager Who Lost His Mom Was ...'

Sir Paul McCartney is one of the most celebrated and successful musicians and songwriters of all time. Born on June 18, 1942, his working-class upbringing in Liverpool was far from his estimated billion-dollar net worth decades later.

Music was a communal experience in McCartney's childhood home, and he loved to listen to his father, James, who worked at the local Cotton Exchange, play the piano. Although Mary, his mother and a midwife, wasn't very musical, James had made a name for himself as the leader of a local jazz group, Jim Mac's Band. In 1956, McCartney's mother tragically died of breast cancer when he was just 14, leaving James to care for their two sons on his own. A year later, McCartney joined a young John Lennon's skiffle band, the Quarrymen, which was the foundation for the Beatles. 

As a singer, songwriter, and bassist, McCartney would go on to completely change the global musical landscape. Even outside of the Beatles, McCartney wrote songs for folk artists, performed with his band Wings, and launched one of the most successful solo careers in history. As of late 2026, he is recognized by Guinness World Records for writing the most No. 1 singles, as well as for McCartney's first-ever live performance to the orbiting ISS. An innovator who managed to turn troubles into triumph, McCartney has plenty of wisdom to bestow on us with today's quote of the day.

"Being a teenager who lost his mom was a particular thing you didn't really talk about much."

In a 2018 interview with GQ Magazine, Sir Paul McCartney offered a candid look into his long and decorated career. This specific quote came after McCartney described returning to Liverpool to step into his childhood home for the first time in over 20 years. Although he had given street tours to friends visiting the city, the house itself had been turned into a historical tourist destination –– and McCartney himself was apprehensive about what else may be revisited once he stepped inside.

However, when recalling his meeting and collaboration with rapper Kanye West, he revealed that their bond over losing their mothers led them to record McCartney's first Billboard Top 40 song in 25 years, "Only One." Aside from being a teenage boy, it must have been difficult to overcome his grief while dealing with the fame and opportunity that blossomed so quickly after it.

Paul McCartney may not have publicly felt the need to discuss the loss of his mother very often (clarifying in his GQ interview that "When asked, of course you would talk about it, but you wouldn't go on about it."), but that doesn't mean it didn't play a key role in his life. The loss impacted his family terribly: he watched his father be wracked by grief, and he and his brother, Mike, made regrettable jokes in the immediate aftermath. The guilt and devastation drove the young Beatle to avoid any circumstances that left him vulnerable to revisiting those difficult emotions.  

Perhaps his reluctance to share his grief was out of self-preservation, but he did a fair bit of revealing over time. Following the death of John Lennon's mother in 1958, McCartney forged an even stronger connection with his fellow Beatle, and the shared tragedy helped to bring the band together, bleeding into their music as well. The Beatles' hit 1970 single, "Let It Be," was inspired by McCartney's mother, Mary, who visited the bassist in a dream and offered the titular phrase as advice. Despite not feeling like he had the space or the will to openly discuss the circumstances, he managed to transform his grief into something everyone could relate to.

The longer you sit with terrible feelings, the more likely they are to eat away at you from the inside. Find an outlet that allows you to truly feel your emotions, and don't let the outside noise tell you how you should express them.

• "Things people write often do refer to the past, but it's hard to just refer to tomorrow. We don't know what's gonna happen then. But the past is even just talking about yesterday. It's full of stuff. It's a rich place to mine for ideas."

• "Well, it's a rich vein, ordinary life, and the task is to make it sound not ordinary, but to celebrate it. It is good for me to draw on things like that. It's one of my big areas of exploration."

• "When you do something, you kind of do it for yourself, but at the same time, you want people to hear it and judge whether it's any good."

• "So I do like to go on about The Beatles, because it was magical. People say, 'Do you believe in magic?' And I say, 'I've got to.' And I don't mean, you know, Gandalf or wizardry or that sort of thing necessarily. For me, it's how life can be magical, these things that just came together."

• "It's good to connect with different artists. The secret is I keep myself very open to suggestions –– I still feel like I'm about 30."