Paul McCartney Said His Single Favorite Aspect of ‘Lady Madonna’ Is the Dark Recurring Phrase, ‘See How They Run’

Paul McCartney said his single favorite aspect of The Beatles‘ “Lady Madonna” is the dark recurring phrase, “See how they run.” The line is more complex than anyone can imagine and comes from a subconscious place inside Paul. The singer-songwriter has always known how to juxtapose light and dark, good and bad, in his songs with minimal effort.

Paul McCartney based ‘Lady Madonna’ on the Virgin Mary and his mother

In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul wrote that his mother’s death is something he never got over. He was only fourteen when Mary McCartney died of breast cancer. So, he knows that a song that depicts a “very present, nurturing mother” has got to be influenced by a similar sense of loss, just as “Lady Madonna” does.

“The question about how Lady Madonna manages ‘to feed the rest’ is particularly poignant to me, since you don’t have to be a psychoanalyst to figure out that I myself was one of ‘the rest,'” Paul wrote. He believes he must have felt left out, needing a mother’s love, at the time.

“Lady Madonna” is a tribute to “the mother figure, a tribute to women.” In Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now, Paul said the idea for “Lady Madonna” came from the Virgin Mary. Paul’s mother was Catholic, and his songs have many Catholic and religious aspects.

Making “Lady Madonna” a tribute to the mother figure and all women was a conscious act on Paul’s part. However, his favorite line came from his subconscious.

Paul loves that ‘Lady Madonna’ had the recurring phrase, ‘See how they run’

In The Lyrics, Paul wrote that his single favorite aspect of “Lady Madonna” isn’t that it has depictions of a caring mother like Mary. His favorite part of the tune is the dark recurring phrase, “See how they run.”

It comes from the nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice, “with that rather less-than-nurturing farmer’s wife who cuts off their tails with a carving knife,” Paul wrote. “That reference lends a slightly dark aspect to the song. In any case, the word ‘run’ also refers to stockings.”

One of Paul’s “abiding” memories of growing up was that, in addition to the more important issues women faced, they were always fixing their stockings. That’s where the lyric, “Thursday night, your stockings needed mending,” comes from.

All of these ideas somehow morphed into “Lady Madonna.” There’s the reassuring and calming mother figure. On the other hand, there’s the darkness of mice getting chopped up. Although Paul’s favorite line came from a nursery rhyme, which should’ve been just as soothing as the nurturing mother, it’s not. It’s almost disturbing.

However, that is the genius of Paul. He can blend contrasting things into one cohesive song without even trying.

Paul thinks refrains are very important in songs

Whether Paul was talking about the farmer’s wife chopping off the mice’s tails or women mending their stockings, the repetition in ‘See how they run’ is “one of the most powerful components in songwriting.”

The technical term for that repeated phrase is “refrain.” Paul and The Beatles were “having fun” with that idea of refrains when they wrote “Lady Madonna.” In their song “Hey Jude,” they sing, “And anytime you feel the pain/ Hey Jude, refrain.”

Despite how much he loved refrains, Paul wrote that The Beatles were always “operating on the cusp between being conscious of how a ‘refrain’ contributed to a song and basically having no idea what we were doing.”

Many think that The Beatles were conscious of what they were writing, but it was quite the opposite. “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” didn’t stand for LSD. It was just the name of a painting John Lennon’s son Julian made at school. The Beatles were never consciously thinking of what they were doing. Everything was natural.

Paul has often said that his subconscious thoughts, memories, and feelings came out in his songs. Writing “Lady Madonna” was no different. None of his inspirations was forced. There’s a “certain magic” about that, Paul thinks. “So much of what we did came from a deep sense of wonder rather than study.” That’s why the power of The Beatles is so special.