Paul McCartney once wrote a song called "Etcetera" for Marianne Faithfull in 1968, but she turned it down, and McCartney himself later admitted he was relieved the recording was lost forever. Speaking to biographer Barry Miles, he candidly described it as "a bad song" and said it was "a good job" it had "died a death in some tape bin", offering a rare admission that not everything he wrote met his own high standard. The episode stands out because, at the height of Beatlemania, artists rarely refused a McCartney or Lennon composition, given how reliably their songs delivered hits for others.

McCartney acknowledged a habit of keeping his strongest material for The Beatles and passing lesser songs to other artists, particularly newcomers like Faithfull, who was then dating Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger. Beatles engineer Alan Brown recalled "Etcetera" more fondly as a beautiful ballad, though he heard it only twice before the tape vanished. The melody was reportedly reworked into "Thingumybob", later released by The Black Dyke Mills Band via Apple Records. Faithfull's decision to reject the song, despite the potential career boost of a McCartney association, is framed in the article as a principled and ultimately shrewd move.