Who is Martha in The Beatles’ ‘Martha My Dear’?

Any seasoned songwriter doesn’t put limits on what they can talk about in their tunes. Most people might like to write a love song since that’s what appeals to a broad audience, but when they stop thinking about what’s going to sell, it’s far more interesting to talk about whatever strange topic comes into your head. And once The Beatles hit the back end of the 1960s, their experimentation meant that no strange topic was too strange not to be included on one of their albums.

Because if someone could have released a tune like ‘Revolution 9’, they would probably be open to almost anything. The Fab Four had already started expanding their horizons when working on the drug-fuelled Sgt Peppers, but even if no one knew about the wonders of cellophane flowers and newspaper taxis that John Lennon was talking about in ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’, it didn’t matter when the song sounded fantastic.

After going on a meditation retreat in India, though, every writer in the band seemed to come away with more songs than they knew what to do with. And while some of them may have been cacophonous noise like ‘Wild Honey Pie’, the fruits of their labour were among the finest tunes they’d ever write, like ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ or ‘Dear Prudence’. Then again, McCartney was always going to be the one making a song far more fruity than the others.

While Macca was more than happy to serve the song whenever it popped into his head, ‘Martha My Dear’ was one of the most chipper tunes in the group’s catalogue. Despite completing most of it by himself, the song does hold together as a proper Beatles song, only this time the object of his affection is a lot more furry than some may have thought.

So who is Martha in ‘Martha My Dear’?
Compared to John Lennon writing odes to his new relationship with Yoko Ono and George Harrison growing more spiritual by the day, this was McCartney’s loving ode to his sheepdog, whom he had named Martha. And for a tune that’s so lighthearted, it feels like a music journey throughout, especially when the song starts chugging along as he sings that the two are meant to be for each other.

In fact, there are pieces of this that would cause alarm if Martha was an actual girlfriend of McCartney’s. The whole tune might work on that level for the most part, but hearing him condescendingly telling her to hold her hand out and describing her as a “silly girl” may have been taken the wrong way if heard out of context. But even without the lyrics, the tune is far more exciting than you’d expect an ode to a pet.

Given how many twists and turns there are over a few minutes, this feels like McCartney’s answer to Lennon’s ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’. Both tunes have different musical movements that are never returned to, and compared to the usual verse-chorus structure, both of them have a linear approach that seems more in line with what classical music does throughout its runtime.

Even if the tune isn’t one of the most well-recognised Beatles songs of all time, it deserves its time in the spotlight among their most adventurous. There was a lot more ground for the band to cover on The White Album, but it’s almost a strange humble brag for McCartney to make something this inventive out of him talking about his dog.