Paul McCartney Relates To De Niro Character In Everybody’s Fine

Paul McCartney doesn’t write many songs for films. But the former Beatle did offer up the ballad “(I Want to) Come Home” for the new Robert De Niro movie, Everybody’s Fine, about a widower trying to reconnect with his grown-up children at Christmastime. It’s a storyline, as it turns out, McCartney can relate to.

McCartney and his wife Linda, who died in 1998, had three children, and he adopted her daughter from a previous marriage. He also has a 6-year-old daughter with his ex-wife Heather Mills. In an interview with Variety, McCartney commented on his personal link to the new film and its effect on the songwriting process:

“It’s not necessary for me to relate to a project that I’m writing about, but if I do, it’s more interesting. The De Niro character lost his wife, has grown-up children and wants to get them together for Christmas. I know that syndrome.”

Speaking to the Canadian Press, Kirk Jones, director of Everybody’s Fine, said he loves how the new song works for the film, noting that McCartney performed it with so much passion and honesty.

“I love the fact that it was written and sung by a man who has lived a life and experienced a number of things that were related to the movie.”

The 67-year-old McCartney acknowledged that he shed a few tears when he watched an early screening of the film, clearly identifying with DeNiro’s character.

McCartney said he wrote “(I Want to) Come Home” from the viewpoint of De Niro’s character. But he noted the song could be interpreted from the adult children perspective, perhaps a subconscious aspect of composing this particular song.

“The magic of songs and the magic of composing is you don’t always know what you’re doing, and that’s what hooks me into it, and why I could never stop composing.”

Other McCartney film work includes the James Bond film Live and Let Die and Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky. He also wrote tunes for the 1980s film Spies Like Us, but don’t hold that against him.