1 Song From The Beatles’ ‘Rubber Soul’ Wasn’t a Hit But Anne Murray’s Cover Was

Paul McCartney said he wrote one of the songs from The Beatles‘ Rubber Soul in an unusual manner. Anne Murray covered the song in the 1970s. Subsequently, Murray’s cover became one of her biggest hits.

Paul McCartney said writing 1 song from The Beatles’ ‘Rubber Soul’ was a departure for him

In the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul discussed the origin of The Beatles’ “You Won’t See Me.” “Normally, I write on a guitar and have full chords, or on the piano and have full chords, but this was written around two little notes, a very slim phrase, a two-note progression that I had very high on the first two strings of the guitar: the E and the B strings,” he said.

“I had it up on the high position, and I just let the note on the string descend semitone at a time, and kept the top note the same, and against that I was playing a descending chromatic scale,” he added. “Then I wrote the tune for ‘You Won’t See Me’ against it.”

Why Paul McCartney gave John Lennon a writing credit for the song even though he wasn’t sure if he wrote any of it

Subsequently, Paul explained how the tune evolved. “I changed it, but it was still a two-note thing but instead of it going down I pushed it up and then came down again; just a slight variation,” he recalled.

“It was 100% me as I recall, but I am always quite happy to give John a credit because there’s always a chance that on the session he might have said, ‘That’d be better,'” he said. During a 1980 interview in the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, John gave Paul sole credit for the track. Notably, Anne Murray covered the song for her 1974 album Love Song.

How The Beatles’ ‘You Won’t See Me’ and Anne Murray’s cover performed on the pop charts in the United States

The Beatles’ “You Won’t See Me” was never a single, so it did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100. Meanwhile, Rubber Soul topped the Billboard 200 for six weeks, staying on the chart for a total of 70 weeks.

Murray’s “You Won’t See Me” became one of her biggest hits. It peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, remaining on the chart for 20 weeks. It lasted longer on the chart than any of Murray’s other songs except “You Needed Me.” On the other hand, Love Song peaked at No. 24 on the Billboard 200 and spent a total of 33 weeks on the chart.

The Beatles’ “You Won’t See Me” wasn’t a single but Murray’s cover made the song prominent anyway.