The nickname has annoyed Paul McCartney for years. Speaking to The Daily News in 1989, the songwriter said: “I’m comfortable with people still seeing me as ‘The Beatle,’ … It’s like, once Greta Garbo, always Greta Garbo. You want to be alone, you’re still Greta Garbo. Once Brigitte Bardot, always Brigitte Bardot, even when you’re saving baby seals. But I’m not comfortable with being ‘The Cute Beatle.’ I’ve never really thought I was ‘cute,’ though I guess some people think so. Maybe there were a few moments of cute, mostly in the early days. As you get older, the harder edges come out.”

Indeed, despite his later achievements as a solo artist and with his band Wings in the 1970s, McCartney remains best known for the work he did with the Fab Four and has made steps to honor the band’s legacy accordingly, through his spearheading the “Anthology” project in the 1990s and, more recently, cooperating with the blockbuster Peter Jackson documentary “Get Back.” But despite McCartney’s contention that his reputation for cuteness was ill-deserved as he reached maturity, he has never quite shaken the nickname. As late as 2016 McCartney was described using the adjective in a review of a new biography of his life published by The Columbia Dispatch, as well as articles marking his 80th birthday in 2022.