10 Greatest Beatles Classic Rock Songs
5. Paperback Writer
Driven on a propulsive riff The Kinks’ Dave Davies would be proud of, Paperback Writer is a straight ahead rock song that doesn’t once stop to catch its breath.
The lyric was apparently Paul’s response to an Aunt who challenged him to write something, anything, that wasn’t about love. His solution was this tale of an aspiring author, gleefully ripping off, “a man named Lear,” for the plot of his grubby paperback.
Due to a new bit of kit implausibly called the Automatic Transient Overload Control, the Paperback Writer single was cut louder than any previous Beatles record. The song also features a fuller bass sound than previous Beatle records, with Paul’s busy playing adding to the track’s beefy production. The result was The Beatles hardest rocking track up to that point.