For six decades, Paul McCartney kept one Beatles classic locked away. Then a wedding at Madison Square Garden brought it roaring back to life.
The former Beatle performed “I Want to Hold Your Hand” for the first time since 1964 at the reception for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. For anyone who remembers exactly where they were when Beatlemania first hit, this is the kind of news that stops you mid-cup-of-tea.
The song was the Beatles’ first American number one, the track that set off Beatlemania across the United States and opened the door for what became known as the British invasion. It last echoed from the Beatles themselves at the Paramount theatre in New York in September 1964. McCartney had not touched it in public since.
Until Friday night, when Taylor Swift’s mother Andrea welcomed the wedding party into the reception room at Madison Square Garden. After the ceremony, Taylor’s mum, Andrea, invited everyone into the reception room where the stage was set up. Stevie Nicks, the former Fleetwood Mac vocalist, also took a turn on stage.
The friendship between McCartney, 84, and Swift, 36, has been building for years. The pair appeared together on the cover of Rolling Stone back in 2020. McCartney turned up to one of Swift’s Eras Tour shows at Wembley Stadium in 2024, and Swift later returned the favour, attending his intimate concert at the Fonda theatre in Los Angeles.
Swift has never been shy about her admiration. She recently shared an Instagram post about McCartney’s new solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, calling him an “eternally exceptional artist” whom she was “never not inspired” by.
Asked days earlier on BBC Sounds whether he had any advice for Swift on handling fame at that scale, McCartney was typically gracious. “You so see the parallel, you know the fame and the amount of fame,” he said. “The worldwide fame that Taylor Swift has and that we had, but I don’t think she needs any advice, to tell you the truth.”
He added that he would happily help if she ever asked. “I’m like the older brother to that generation, or more like the grandad, actually,” he said, recalling meeting Swift and other young stars including Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter at parties hosted by his wife Nancy Shevell and daughter Stella. “They’re really cool people, they’re very good. I like their voices.”
“I Want to Hold Your Hand” itself remains one of music’s great success stories. Released in 1963, it sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and would have gone straight to number one on release in the UK had the Beatles’ own single “She Loves You” not been blocking the way. It eventually topped the charts anyway, holding the number one spot for five weeks over Christmas and staying in the UK top 50 for 21 weeks.
Sixty years on, it took a wedding at Madison Square Garden to coax it out of retirement. Some songs, it seems, are simply waiting for the right hand to hold.
Images: Instagram, Wikimedia Commons
