This Never Happened Before
| "This Never Happened Before" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Promo CD single | ||||
| Promotional single by Paul McCartney | ||||
| from the album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard | ||||
| B-side | "This Never Happened Before" (album version) | |||
| Released | 2006 | |||
| Recorded | November 2003 | |||
| Studio | RAK, London | |||
| Genre | Rock | |||
| Length |
| |||
| Label | Capitol | |||
| Songwriter | Paul McCartney | |||
| Producer | Nigel Godrich | |||
| Paul McCartney promo singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
"This Never Happened Before" is a song by English musician Paul McCartney, released as the twelfth track on his fourteenth studio album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005).
Background and composition
"This Never Happened Before" was written by Paul McCartney as a love song inspired by Burt Bacharach.[1] He told Gary Crowley about the structure of the song in a Chaos and Creation in the Backyard interview disc:
It's [sic] Never Happened Before is a straight love song [...] The chords, it's always a big help if you get a nice little chord sequence and the opening chords to the verse of that go a nice place so they settle you down with your melody and you feel like you're going somewhere, so that was what was happening and wrote it and recorded it, one of the very first things we did with Nigel at Rak, that was one of the things to see if we could sort of get it on and I thought, 'This is good. We're going to go somewhere with this'.[2]
— Paul McCartney, talking about the chord structure of "This Never Happened Before", Chaos and Creation in the Backyard Interview Disc
"This Never Happened Before" is in the key of E major, despite the song's vocal-piano songbook, which lists it as being in the key of A minor.[3]
Track listing
- Promo CD DPRO-49684-2
- "This Never Happened Before" (edit 2) - 3:13
- "This Never Happened Before" (album version) - 3:23
Personnel
Per booklet.[4]
- Paul McCartney – vocals, Yamaha grand piano, Höfner bass guitar, Epiphone Casino electric guitar, Ludwig drums
- Millennia Ensemble – strings, brass
- Joby Talbot – conducting, arrangement
Use in media
"This Never Happened Before" was used in the 2006 film The Lake House and was included on the film's soundtrack album.[3][5]
Charts
| Chart (2005) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| US Adult Contemporary (Billboard)[6] | 27 |
References
- ↑ Blaney, John (28 March 2007). Lennon And McCartney, Together Alone: A Critical Discography of Their Solo Work. Jawbone Press. pp. 272–73. ISBN 978-1-906002-02-2.
- ↑ "Chaos And Creation In The Backyard Interview Disc". The Paul McCartney Project. Retrieved 2 August 2026.
- 1 2 Benitez Jr, Vincent P. (23 October 2010). The Words and Music of Paul McCartney: The Solo Years. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. p. 164. ISBN 978-0-313-34970-6.
- ↑ Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (Booklet). Paul McCartney. Parlophone, EMI. 2005. 00946 337958 2 2, 337 9582.
{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link) - ↑ Jurek, Thom. "The Lake House [Original Soundtrack] Review". AllMusic. Retrieved 2 August 2026.
- ↑ "Paul McCartney Chart History (Adult Contemporary)". Billboard. Retrieved 2 August 2026.
External links
