Paul McCartney ‘So Happy’ With Beyoncé’s ‘Magnificent’ Version of ‘Blackbird’

Paul McCartney applauded Beyoncé’s rendition of the White Album classic “Blackbird” in a statement posted Thursday on the Beatles legend’s social media.

“I am so happy with [Beyoncé’s] version of my song ‘Blackbird,’” McCartney wrote alongside a photo of the singers together. “I think she does a magnificent version of it and it reinforces the civil rights message that inspired me to write the song in the first place. I think Beyoncé has done a fab version and would urge anyone who has not heard it yet to check it out. You are going to love it!”

McCartney has long stated that “Blackbird” was influenced by the Little Rock Nine, a group of nine black students who faced discrimination and the lasting impact of segregation after enrolling in the all-white Little Rock Central High School in 1957 following the Supreme Court’s historic Brown vs. the Board of Education decision.

After the Little Rock Nine enrolled, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus protested their entrance into the school, which in turn sparked the Little Rock Crisis. It was these events, as well as the civil rights movement itself, that inspired McCartney to pen “Blackbird.”

“I spoke to her on FaceTime and she thanked me for writing it and letting her do it. I told her the pleasure was all mine and I thought she had done a killer version of the song,” McCartney added of Beyoncé’s “Blackbiird.” 

“When I saw the footage on the television in the early 60s of the black girls being turned away from school, I found it shocking and I can’t believe that still in these days there are places where this kind of thing is happening right now. Anything my song and Beyoncé’s fabulous version can do to ease racial tension would be a great thing and makes me very proud.”

Rob Sheffield wrote of “Blackbiird,” “It’s a stroke of Beyoncé’s revisionary genius that brings the story of “Blackbird” full circle. She claims the song as if Paul McCartney wrote it for her. Because, in so many ways, he did… Paul wrote this song as a dialogue with Black America; Bey’s “Blackbird” is part of that call-and-response, proof that the song always meant exactly what McCartney hoped it would mean.”

Additionally, “Blackbiird” features a quintet of rising Black country singers: Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts.

From Rolling Stone US.