Paul McCartney Leaves Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s Madison Square Garden Wedding in Complete Silence After Reviving a Beatles Classic He Hadn’t Performed Live in 62 Years, Delivering an Emotional Music History Moment That Guests Say Became the Most Unforgettable Performance of the Entire Celebration

Paul McCartney had a secret song of his own at Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s Madison Square Garden wedding reception last Friday, serenading guests with a Beatles hit that hadn’t been sung live by the rock star in 62 years.

Playing in front of a crowd of 1,000 people at the New York venue, including Swift and Kelce’s parents, comedian Adam Sandler and music legend Stevie Nicks, McCartney sang “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” a song he wrote with John Lennon in 1963 and one that has never been performed onstage by the singer as a solo act, according to reporting from RollingStone and People.

“I Want To Hold Your Hand” was The Beatles’ first number one hit on U.S. charts and closed out the band’s seminal appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on Feb. 9, 1964. The song held its position on the charts for the entirety of The Beatles’ two-week first trip to the United States. McCartney, who wrote the hit song with bandmate John Lennon, was 21 at the time.

However, as The Beatles ventured into different sounds, the song was scrapped from the setlist. The band stopped touring altogether in 1964. McCartney held onto that streak as a solo performer and with his later act, Wings. According to setlist.fm, the obsessively researched concert setlist site, McCartney last performed “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on Sept. 20, 1964, with The Beatles at New York’s Paramount Theatre, a defunct venue less than a mile away from Madison Square Garden.

McCartney’s performance at the Swift-Kelce nuptials marks another notable walk down memory lane this year for the 84-year-old rock star. In May, McCartney gave the final musical performance for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” singing on the same stage where The Beatles premiered for an American audience for the first time on Sullivan in 1964.

Coming off his 2025 “Got Back” concert tour, McCartney has been promoting his latest album, the reflective “The Boys of Dungeon Lane,” which, with the occasional help from his friend Ringo Starr, reminisces on the British singer’s childhood memories in Liverpool. Starr, the only other surviving Beatle, is featured on the album’s 10th track, “Home to Us,” their first official collaboration since The Beatles broke up in 1970.

While The Beatles’ rise to superstardom was rapid, Swift’s status as one of the world’s most recognizable figures has been coalescing since her early success as a teenage country act in the 2000s. After stoking the protracted longings of her audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic with intimate album drops, Swift gained the world’s attention and never let it go, emerging from the pandemic with the colossal and compiliative “Eras Tour.”

Swift’s success has led to comparisons from McCartney to Beatlemania.

“You do see the parallel, the fame and the amount of fame,” McCartney told The BBC in May. “The worldwide fame that Taylor Swift has and that we had, but I don’t think she needs any advice to tell you the truth.”