WASHINGTON — Midway through his performance Tuesday evening at the Verizon Center, the most successful pop songwriter of our time — and maybe the greatest — paused to address the frequently asked question: Where do the songs come from?
Some start with a title, Paul McCartney said. Sometimes, it's the melody. And sometimes, it's a musical phrase. By way of example, he played a trim little descending line on his acoustic guitar — familiar, if not immediately recognizable.
And then he began to sing: "When I call you up, your line's engaged …" And soon the other players were falling in behind him for a slow, sweet run through "You Won't See Me."
Such moments were highlights of a terrific night.
In the 1998 movie "Sliding Doors," a character talks about the elemental nature of the Beatles in Western popular culture: "Everybody's born knowing all the Beatles lyrics instinctively. They're passed into the fetus subconsciously along with all the amniotic stuff. They should be called 'The Fetals.'"
This, essentially, is the challenge for McCartney in 2016: So much of his catalog is so well-known — and not just the music, but the stories behind many of the songs — how does he keep surprising the fans who keep turning up, many of them after many times?
On Tuesday, his answer was showing where "You Won't See Me" came from. Digging up the early electropop experiment "Temporary Secretary," an off-center 1980 song that managed to update "Paperback Writer" while also pointing to the Fireman and Twin Freaks projects to come.
Adding bluesier piano and more gospelly background vocals to "Let It Be," pointing to a different direction for that most Fetal of songs might have taken. Leading his band through the skiffle/country shuffle "In Spite of All the Danger," the 1958 McCartney/George Harrison composition for the pre-Beatles Quarrymen that for decades was only a rumor. Then playing "FourFiveSeconds," his hit last year with Rihanna and Kanye West.
Of course, the classics were great, too, from the opening window-smash chord of "A Hard Day's Night" through to the final elegiac couplet to conclude "The End": It's a Beatle, playing Beatles songs.
McCartney's touring band — guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, keyboardist Wix Wickens and drummer Abe Laboriel Jr. — has been playing together as long as the Beatles and Wings combined. They know the music inside out, and dance on the fine line between playing it straight and adding wicked little embellishments, like toughening the rockers "Back in the U.S.S.R.," "Birthday" and "I've Got a Feeling," and stretching out the three-way guitar duel in "The End."
Also cool were a pair of songs from McCartney's 2013 "New": The title song, strongly reminiscent of "Penny Lane," and "Queenie Eye," psychedelic in the manner of "I Am the Walrus." A heartfelt "Blackbird," delivered solo on acoustic guitar. A swirling "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" a carnival madhouse of spinning colored lights. And "Live and Let Die" — a McCartney concert staple, with explosions and flames, Anderson and Ray spinning in place, fast-cutting video careening across the giant screens, and McCartney on grand piano, presiding over the mayhem like the Phantom of the Opera.
What else? "Maybe I'm Amazed," the best of his post-Beatles ballads. "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," taken back to its ska roots. Harrison's "Something," starting on solo ukulele.
The show went from strength to strength across nearly 40 songs — depending on how you count the different parts of the "Abbey Road" suite — and he still didn't play 100 that he might have.
Maybe tonight, when McCartney returns to Verizon Center.
Setlist:
A Hard Day's Night
Save Us
Can't Buy Me Love
Letting Go
Temporary Secretary
Let Me Roll It
I've Got a Feeling
My Valentine
Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five
Here, There and Everywhere
Maybe I'm Amazed
We Can Work it Out
In Spite of All the Danger
You Won't See Me
Love Me Do
And I Love Her
Blackbird
Here Today
Queenie Eye
New
The Fool on the Hill
Lady Madonna
FourFiveSeconds
Eleanor Rigby
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!
Something
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Band on the Run
Back In The U.S.S.R.
Let It Be
Live and Let Die
Hey Jude
Yesterday
Hi, Hi, Hi
Birthday
Golden Slumbers
Carry That Weight
You Never Give Me Your Money
The End