# Why did Paul McCartney write a song about 1985 in 1973?

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/why-did-paul-mccartney-write-a-song-about-1985-in-1973/
- Published: 2026-10-28T16:45:00+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-04T01:40:09+00:00
- Original publisher: Far Out
- Original article: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/paul-mccartney-write-song-about-1985-in-1973/
- Topics: Art, Culture, Entertainment, Music

## Key points

- The year 1985 was chosen because it fitted McCartney’s opening line.
- The song is about devotion, not a prediction.
- He performed it live again on his 2010–11 tour.

## Summary

Paul McCartney did not write “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five” as a prediction about the year itself. The Wings song closes the 1973 album *Band on the Run*, and its title came from a line that occurred to McCartney and sounded right to him.

He said the opening line stayed with him for months before the rest of the lyrics came together; changing the year to 1986, he joked, would not have worked. The song’s central idea is a declaration of devotion to his partner, rather than a forecast of what life or the music business would be like in 1985. McCartney returned to the rarely performed track on tour in 2010–11, nearly four decades after its release.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.