In May 1980, after years of recording with his post-Beatles band Wings, Paul McCartney released his second official solo album, McCartney II. The 11-track collection featured the iconic singer-songwriter handling all of the vocals and playing every instrument heard.
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McCartney II’s first single was the upbeat, synth-driven tune “Coming Up,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks. The album’s single was a pretty, introspective ballad called “Waterfalls.” That song was a No. 9 hit in the U.K. Somehow, it had only a minor impact on the U.S. chart, falling short of breaking into the Hot 100.
That being said, “Waterfalls” is a true under-the-radar gem, at least for American fans. In his 2021 book, The Lyrics: 1956 To The Present, McCartney explains that the song was inspired by the concerns he and his first wife, Linda, had for their children’s safety at the time.
“This song was written when, as parents, Linda and I seemed to spend a lot of time doling out the kind of advice that parents are always giving children,” he explained. “The protagonist of the song sounds very much like me, talking to my kids, advising them to stay safe and not to get into any scrapes. You want them to grow up healthy and have their adventures, but you don’t want them doing dangerous stuff, because you don’t want to lose them.”
Paul then noted that, lyrically, the tune eventually “wanders where it fancies, and it becomes a bit more of a love song.”
Various verses in the song begin with warnings. “Don’t go jumping waterfalls,” “don’t go chasing polar bears,” and “don’t run after motor cars.”
Similarities Between McCartney’s Song and a Huge 1990s Hit
Paul McCartney’s song “Waterfalls” features some noticeable similarities with another more famous tune with the same title. Pop/R&B trio TLC had a massive hit with their song “Waterfalls”. The track topped the Hot 100 for seven weeks in the summer of 1995.
The chorus of TLC’s song features the line “Don’t go chasing waterfalls / Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to.” McCartney’s “Waterfalls” includes the lyric “Don’t go jumping waterfalls / Please keep to the lake.”
The TLC tune also features a similar theme, with the singers warning certain people to be careful of the potentially dangerous lifestyles they’re leading.
The parallels between McCartney’s “Waterfalls” and TLC’s didn’t go unnoticed by Sir Pau. In his book The Lyrics, McCartney wrote, “There was another version, a completely different song, that was a big hit for someone else. I remember thinking, ‘I wonder if they heard mine?’ I think it had nearly the exact same line in the chorus, but then I also thought, ‘Great. There must have been something right about it.’ Either that or ‘Sue the bastards.’ But then, like I always say, songwriters are always stealing a bit from here and a bit from there.”
Paul McCartney Shared His Recollections of Writing “Waterfalls”
Regarding the writing of “Waterfalls”, McCartney wrote in The Lyrics, “I think the waterfall idea came to me when I was on holiday in the US with my family. It was a song that I had started working on when I was still in Wings, but then it ended up on my solo record, ‘McCartney II’. In fact, it was the only song on that record that wasn’t made up during the recording sessions.”
He added, “I think I left it off the Wings album because I wasn’t happy with the lyrics; they had just spewed out, and I thought I would probably change them. But then, in time, I got to like them as they were. So I stripped it right down, kept it simple, and it became one of my favorite songs at the time.”
(Photo by Robert R. McElroy/Getty Images)
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