Junk

Paul McCartney wrote "Junk", track six on McCartney, 1:54 (the Beatles Bible and the project site say 1:57), with working titles "Jubilee" and "Junk in the Yard". It was written in 1968 in Rishikesh, India, during the Beatles' Transcendental Meditation visit; his April 1970 press kit said it was originally written in India at Maharishi's camp and completed bit by bit in London. A demo was recorded at George Harrison's bungalow at Esher in late May 1968, considered for the White Album, and released on Anthology 3 (October 28, 1996) and the 2018 White Album Super Deluxe Edition. On January 9, 1969 he busked a 16-second version in mock French at Twickenham during the Get Back sessions.

He recorded it at home at 7 Cavendish Avenue on January 17, 1970: take one became the instrumental "Singalong Junk", take two, with a vocal, became "Junk". Overdubs were made at Morgan Studios on February 18 and it was mixed there on February 26. He plays vocals, acoustic guitars, bass, xylophone and drums; "Singalong Junk" adds electric guitar, piano and Mellotron. The lyric lists objects in a junk shop, and critics read it as about transience, with a link to the Beatles' breakup flagged as speculation. In The Lyrics (2021), as paraphrased by the project site, he called it mostly a love song, with the chord sequence coming first and the opening chord suggesting a scrapyard.

The held upload is the 2011 remaster. It was not a single and did not chart. It was played as an instrumental on MTV Unplugged, recorded on January 25, 1991 at Limehouse Studios and released on May 20, 1991 as track 17 of Unplugged (The Official Bootleg), and sung at the Royal Albert Hall on November 3, 2006. A string-quartet version, recorded in February 1999 at EMI Studios, opens Working Classical (November 1, 1999). Covers include Chet Atkins (1970), Roger Williams, Cilla Black and John Denver (1971), Anne Sofie von Otter and Elvis Costello (2001), Jeff Lynne (2014) and Hailey Tuck (2018); Sandie Shaw's a cappella version is dated 1969, before the album, which we could not explain. "Singalong Junk" was in Jerry Maguire. Rolling Stone ranks it seventh among his solo songs, though we did not open that list.