Her Majesty - Complete

'Her Majesty’ was first performed at the Get Back/Let It Be sessions in January 1969. McCartney brought the song to the band in Twickenham on 9 January.

But it lasted until July 2nd before McCartney recorded the takes on Abbey Road that we all know and love. Or do we? Her Majesty is the least popular Beatles track on Spotify. In defence of Her Majesty, the statistics may lead us astray since Her Majesty is only 23 seconds long, not long enough to be consistently registered by the Spotify statistics......

Still, I haven't met many Beatles fans who name Her Majesty as their favourite track. It certainly has an unfinished feel to it: it consists of only one verse, there is no intro, chorus, middle eight.... Did McCartney consider it to be a finished song? On the one hand, he recorded 3 takes of it, suggesting that it was finished. On the other hand, Her Majesty was intended to be included in the Medley on the B-side of Abbey Road, which consist of half-finished songs.

Because of its place in the medley, McCartney may have felt there was no need to come up with a second verse and a middle eight; but in the end, he rejected Her Majesty altogether for Abbey Road. It was only because junior technician John Kurlander refused to discard the tape, that Her Majesty was included on Abbey Road at all.

This makes it interesting to think about what would have happened if Kurlander had followed McCartney's instructions to discard the tape. It is my assumption that McCartney would have resurrected Her Majesty for his first solo album, McCartney; he did so for several other songs composed in his Beatles era, but not included on any Beatles album. For the McCartney Album, he would have made a proper backing track (woodwind and slurpy cello arrangement) and composed a middle eight.

And here we have it, as a world premiere, what Her Majesty might have sounded like on the 'McCartney' album.

So what is Her Majesty about? The easy answer would be the British Queen, and that is what McCartney himself has hinted at in interviews. However, the lyrics don't seem to fit Queen Elisabeth at all: no disrespect, but Elisabeth is not a 'pretty nice girl', nor does she stay quiet, or changes every day......So the subject must be someone else, who can't be named. Once you hear the name, it is quite obvious, but I'll leave that for some other occasion. Feel free to comment if you have suggestions!