Songfacts®:

• Here, Paul McCartney gives some sage advice to "women and wives" and "husbands and lovers," urging them to consider how they live their lives as the younger members of their families will follow their example.
• McCartney wrote the song in Los Angeles after reading a book on the blues pioneer Lead Belly. He recalled to Uncut magazine: "I was deep in the South and the blues and I sat at the piano one day and started playing the chords at the beginning of the song. Lead Belly inspired that vocal style, well, mama... that Southern blues thing. It suited this song. 'Hear me, husband and lovers. What we do, do with our lives.' Then I was off on the trail. So suddenly, 'Seems to matter to others.' Hey let's think about what we're handing down to them. As a parent and grandparent, you think that kind of stuff."
• Speaking to The Sun, McCartney compared "Women And Wives" to the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song "Teach Your Children" sung "in the emphatic tones" of Lead Belly. "I was in a good but bluesy mood," he said. "I'd been reading about Lead Belly so I was doing that 'I've got the bluuueeesss' style."
• McCartney later recorded the song for his McCartney III album at his Hogg Hill Mill studio in Sussex, England. Like the other songs on the album, he played all the instruments, including the upright bass that Bill Black used when touring with Elvis Presley.
• On April 16, 2021, Paul McCartney released McCartney III Imagined, a collection of reworkings of the album's tracks by various artists. American singer-songwriter St. Vincent redid this song. She told The Sun: "I probably made nine different versions of it just trying to make sure it was absolutely right because Sir Paul was going to hear it. No pressure!"