Paul McCartney Wrote This Underrated Beatles B-Side From 1964 While Seasick and Thinking About His Girlfriend

If you’ll be so kind as to allow this humble writer an Office reference, Andy Bernard was really cooking when he said he wished there was a way to “know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.” Almost exactly five decades earlier, Paul McCartney was capturing a similar sentiment with “Things We Said Today”, the underrated B-side to the far more ubiquitous A-side, “A Hard Day’s Night”, which the Fab Four released in July 1964.

McCartney once said he was aiming to capture a sense of “future nostalgia” with the song, writing from a perspective that places the listener in the future, looking back on a present romantic moment. “Someday, when we’re dreaming / deep in love, not a lot to say / Then we will remember things we said today.”

“It was a slightly nostalgic thing already,” McCartney explained in Many Years From Now. “A future nostalgia. We’ll remember the things we said today, sometime in the future. So, the song projects itself into the future and then is quite nostalgic about the moment we’re living in now, which is quite a good trick.”

Paul McCartney Wrote “Things We Said Today” While Miles Away From His Girlfriend

The only thing that can rival the nauseous, uncomfortable feeling of being away from someone you’re desperately, head-over-heels in love with is maybe getting seasick on the open ocean. And unfortunately for Paul McCartney, he was experiencing both during a vacation in the United States Virgin Islands with Ringo Starr and his wife, Maureen. Not even the gorgeous, sunny weather could stop McCartney from thinking about his girlfriend, Jane Asher, who was miles away, pursuing her own career in the theatre.

“I remember writing ‘Things We Said Today’ in one of the cabins below deck one afternoon on my acoustic guitar,” McCartney said. “I got away from the main party. But it was a bit queasy downstairs. You could smell the oil, and the boat was rocking a bit. I’m not the best sailor in the world. So, I wrote a little bit of it downstairs and then the rest of it on the back deck where you couldn’t smell the engine.”

The second half of the song came later in the day. “There was something about the atmosphere there that made me quite keen on writing new songs in the evenings,” McCartney once reflected, per Walter Everett’s The Beatles As Musicians.

“Things We Said Today” was one of many songs McCartney wrote about his then-girlfriend, including “I’m Looking Through You” and “And I Love Her” (written at two very different phases in their relationship). Although the success of “A Hard Day’s Night” overshadowed the reception of “Things We Said Today”, it remains one of The Beatles’ better and most underrated B-side cuts.

Photo by Mark Hayward Archive/Redferns