Your reaction to “Getting Closer” reminds me of my reaction to just about every song from Led Zeppelin.
As for Mr. McCartney...he is my favorite Beatle and I will defend him to my death. However, it has always been my contention (and I think this has been supported by various critics, biographers, etc.) that he has always needed a John Lennon or George Martin type who a) can tell him he’s full of it, b) will tell him that he’s full of it, and c) who McCartney respects as an equal. McCartney has always been willing to experiment and to collaborate with others, but it seems like most others are too in awe to criticize him.
I love Led Zeppelin, but for me the utter ridiculousness of Plant's lyrics is part of the fun. Absolutely agree with your Paul assessment; "Veronica," the song he wrote with Elvis Costello, is an example of how good he can be with a strong collaborator. (Though I have to admit that I never loved "My Brave Face".)
Well put, John! As time went on, there's nothing wrong with any of that. Paul, be Paul, BUT, as you mentioned, those who were wise to pick up on Macca's peccadillos learned TO, and the WAYS to, work with them, massage them, and find ways to make a collab with Paul work! Plenty are the great, ego-ed artists around whom no one wanted to even DARE approach!
Thanks for highlighting one of my fave Macca tracks, Dan. Had we known of this common bond we might never have lost touch.
I think it reflects poorly on my character that I’m not at all bothered by these, or really any, lyrical shortcomings in rock. Low expectations are routinely rewarded.
Also, really nice haircut on Paul in the video (which appears to recycle the lighting rig from Genesis’s Seconds Out tour). Do you think he made the rest of Wings, Linda included, retain their mullets so he would stand out?
Ah, Tom — I can indeed easily imagine us arguing about this song over a beer circa 1987.
Yeah, low expectations is probably the best way to proceed with these things — I mean, I love KISS, and I've never thought, "You know, the lyrics to 'Love Gun' really could have been better'. But Paul has clearly been capable at times of matching great (or at least very good) words to outstanding tuneage, so the blatant underachievement here will always stick in my craw.
And I had that same "haircut" reaction myself upon seeing this clip; Paul probably surprised the band with it at the video shoot.
I'm also reminded of McCarney's bewilderment in the Hipgnosis doc upon learning that the sleeve for "Getting Closer" used one of that agency's leftovers. "A lobster? I kinda remember..." 😂
Great doc — though I was disappointed that it didn't include THIS Hipgnosis anecdote, which Jimmy Page brought up in a 1993 Guitar World interview:
"We had commissioned them to design House of the Holy, and this guy Storm came in carrying this picture of an electric green tennis court with a tennis racquet on it. I said, "What the hell does that have to do with anything?" And he said "Racquet — don't you get it?" I said, "Are you trying to imply that our music is a 'racket'? Get out!" We never saw him again. We ended up dealing with one of the other artists. [laughs] That was a total insult — racket. He had some balls! Imagine. On the first meeting with a client!"
Moby Grape. So many trusted friends gushing over the cherished debut, the Archies-on-dexedrine musical stylings and Up With People-recalling layered harmonies repeatedly leaving me cold - maybe the lyrics could be my entry point! Oy. Omaha. Hey Grandma. Fall On Me. Just blatantly tossed off and flamboyantly, defiantly dumb. Listen my friends? I'm gonna take a pass ;)
For me, "Omaha"'s words mesh well with the adrenaline rush of the song, even though they don't make much sense on paper. But "Hey Grandma" is definitely cringe city!
I agree with you about Getting Closer. I love Back to the Egg, BUT...
Thanks for mentioning Kolchak: The Night Stalker! I'd forgotten about that show. I loved it! I don't remember anything about it but the name, and that I found it really scary and thought I was pretty cool for watching it.
I, too, often get frustrated with Paul's sloppy lyrics and his "first thought best thought" approach, because we all know that Paul can write a transcendent lyric when he pays attention. (If I"m sounding like John in his 1980 Playboy interview, it's because I just re-read it.)
Paul is often sloppy with both lyrics and melody. So is John. The difference lies in that John's lyrical sloppiness usually works better than Paul's, and Paul's melodic sloppiness usually works better than John's, and not that it's relevant here, George's sloppiness in both rarely measures up to either Lennon or McCartney. And of course, all three, but esp L/M, are untouchable when they actually pay attention.
That said, here's what I can contribute. I've spent the past three years in deep research on a book about the relationship between John and Paul. I spend a lot of time doing something akin to psychological profiling for my day job, and Paul is without a doubt one of the most difficult people I've ever tried to wrap my mind around because he's so emotionally reserved and cloaks his truths in layers upon layers of contradiction and subtext and sometimes, out and out... untruths.
But great art is by defintion honest, and Paul McCartney is by any defintion a great artist. Thus I tend to look to lyrics for his more honest thoughts. And what I've learned over these many hours is that it's a sure sign that when Paul tells us that a lyric is random and meaningless, that's the place to look for the truth, because as he also admits, that's where the therapy session happens. His "nonsense" lyrics aren't always "good lyrics," but they're fab resources for those of us who struggle to understand what makes Macca tick. And the more apparently nonsensical, the better. So you know, #silverlining, at least for us J/P writers....
This song is definitely not nonsense. I can easily read what he's saying in it, almost line by line, but I won't hijack your comment thread for it. Suffice to say, definitely not nonsense. Not even the cattle.
"She's my baby/Like gravy, down to the last drop/I keep mopping her up," though... yeah, I got nothing. Paul probably needs to stop trying to write sexy songs about women and stick to writing obscure songs about John.
Interesting stuff, Faith — and hijack away, because I'm genuinely curious to know your interpretation of this song, and its apparently (to me) nonsensical lyrics are still proving an impediment to my full-fledged enjoyment of it!
I'll offer that it seems likely that the "you" in the song refers to Paul himself, in much the same way that the "you" in Hey Jude is probably referring to Paul as well, regardless of what John wanted to believe.
In the first episode of Paul’s Life in Lyrics podcast, he says re: lyrics, “it’s liberating, things slip out the way they would in a session with a psychiatrist.”
re: absurdist lyrics: "When you write a song, if you write them like I do, you just sort of block 'em in. Rather than go "vah-zee-day-say-ooh-wah-ay" you start to hear words. You start to find a meaning out of the sounds of the words... I didn't really think too hard about what they meant [in From a Lover to a Friend] but the interesting thing is that it always does mean something” Conversations with McCartney, p. 201 re: From a Lover to a Friend
Paul on Howard Stern, 2021, re: songwriting: it’s kind of nice cuz once you finish it, it’s like you’ve had a psychiatric session and you’ve told all of your secrets and now you feel much better. You’ve got rid of it, you know but into something nice, you know, into something you can then go, oh, here’s all my feelings in a bundle. Let’s record it.”
“When I write, I'm just writing a song, but I think themes do come up. You can't help it. Whatever is important to you finds Its way in. I saw someone writing about an artist, a painter, and he says, ‘every painting a person does is of themselves.’. Even if it's a portrait of his wife. Himself gets in it. You really can't help it, because it's you making all the marks on it. I think it's similar with songwriting. Whether you like it or not, even if you're trying to write a song for a James Bond film, something of what you feel always ends up in it.”
What drives me crazier than ridiculous lyrics is the case of the lazy lyrical couplet, i.e.: Black Sabbath's War Pigs..." generals gather at their masses, just like witches at black masses, & Foreigner's Hot Blooded..." you don't have to read my mind, to know what I have in mind." Lazy-ass lyricists! Btw, I'm thinking of starting an amusement park featuring the Shanghai Noodle Factory, Maggie's Farm, and the Piss Factory.
Dan, thanks for this. I liked it so much I'm going to Dullblog a little (even though I'm retired). Pardon the length; I don't have time to write it shorter :-).
I think Paul is misunderstood in a very particular way, and it's pretty consistent throughout his solo stuff (and even some of his Beatles catalog). What critics prefer--what they need to do their jobs, fill those column inches, and get paid--is pop songs that are texts, the richer the better. And those rich text-makers are the artists that, even when they're not doing great work, they get a lot of critical acclaim. More than a groove, more than a #1, music writers need a song to be a leaping-off point for their own thoughts.
But that's not Paul's job, as he apparently defines it. Paul's job is to make pop music, and if the lyrics are thin, that doesn't seem to bother him, because he's a music-first creator, and that means he's never going to be easy for word-first music writers to handle. As opposed to someone like Bowie, who can stitch together a bunch of interesting-sounding phrases and call it a day. I generally like Bowie, but if the job of a song is to communicate precisely, and the job of pop to communicate precisely with a wide audience, shouldn't we ding a song if the lyrical meaning isn't clear? Shouldn't writers say, "The very thing that made surrealism an interesting dead-end on the continuum of modern art, its rejection of meaning, make it fundamentally inapplicable to the three-minute pop song?" But no music writer says that, because surrealism is GREAT for them; it's nothing but entry points. If you're writing about "Life on Mars," you can write about Brion Gysin, Burroughs, etc etc etc. But when you're on deadline and the text in front of you is "Morse Moose and the Grey Goose"--a song which is primarily a groove, as "Twin Freaks" remix of "Coming Up" shows--what the fuck do you talk about? Macca's vacuity.
Let's take a clearly great opener from a clearly great Macca LP--does it really matter whether Paul's saying "Piece of cake" or "Piss off, 'kay?" at the beginning of "Too Many People"? If you're thinking of it as pure vocal texture, as sounds in a pop song--which is how I'd suspect that Paul thought of it--the difference is immaterial. But if you're thinking of it as a clue, a piece in the larger text of Paul's fight with John, Paul's mental state in 1971, or any other external story, the difference matters. But it's important to remember that the larger story is often US, not Paul. It's a framework that is being imposed by us, for our own reasons, and something that can actually obscure the work. The initial critical response to RAM is a textbook example.
I've listened to "Getting Closer" a zillion times, and never once judged its lyrics as wanting. I may be a huge dork (I AM a huge dork), but the lyrics simply seemed to be rhythmic sounds, and I tried to listen to that song on the terms of the song. As of '79 Paul had been creating pop professionally for 18 years, and was in excellent control of his tools. The lyrics on any Paul song are the ones Paul wanted, and while it's tempting to think that "he creates too much" or "he just needs a strong collaborator" or "he just needs to TRY" because we feel he should want the song to be "A Day In the Life," a rich text, that's not necessarily so. Paul doesn't need every song to be a text, any more than Brian Wilson seems to. WE do.
"Getting Closer" is just a day in the life of a guy who makes pop songs like the rest of us breathe. When he's cruising, just going where the music is taking him, his lyrics can seem thin--when if he wrote them like Lennon, to use the obvious example, there would always be biography-as-context. ("Oh Yoko -- in the middle of a bath I call your name!") Bowie. Dylan. Lou Reed -- any critical fave you name, there's that rich text thing making their work fun and easy to write about. That doesn't mean it's better as art -- or even more interesting or successful as a pop song.
I think we're not going to really get Paul McCartney until we take him on his own terms. In some Paul songs, the lyrics don't matter. Far from assuming carelessness--the guy directed Sgt Pepper!--we should at least consider that he, like Wilson, is occasionally going places where the words are just rhythm and sound. I find it helps me enjoy him more.
I don't disagree at all with your take on "what critics want," Michael, — in retrospect, the "lyrics first" fetishism of my youth was undeniably influenced by how intensely the rock critics of late 70s/early 80s Rolling Stone, CREEM, Trouser Press etc scrutinized the lyrics of whatever new album they were reviewing.
Of course, having spent a good part of my professional life writing for guitar magazines, I know that one can also quite easily write a whole album review based on guitar tones, production choices, etc., and certainly there has been no shortage of well-wrought critical ink spilled over the years on the greatness of more groove-oriented folks like James Brown, Sly Stone, George Clinton, and Nile Rodgers — all of whom I've spun a lot more over the past three decades than I have solo or Wings period Paul McCartney.
I'm less sure about the Brian Wilson's comparison. Wilson produced his strongest work when he had a collaborator who could write the lyrics and allow him to focus on melody, rhythm, arrangement and sound. In Paul's case, his collaborative efforts (both with The Beatles and after) were never so clearly defined, in part because Paul has always been a lot more interested in expressing himself verbally than Brian ever was.
And while it's unfair to expect Paul to come up with "A Day in the Life" every time out (I certainly never did), I think it's likewise impossible to "take Paul on his own terms," when this is a guy who — as Faith Current aptly put it in her comment above — "cloaks his truths in layers upon layers of contradiction and subtext and sometimes, out and out... untruths". Maybe he's being playful and whimsical on "Getting Closer," maybe he's being sloppy, maybe it's all a cover for a darker or deeper meaning, or maybe he's convinced that every idea to fall from his lips is gold. We'll never really know for sure.
Yes, his emphasis on sound and rhythm over words has often served him well — and even does so here with the chorus of "I'm getting closer to your heart," which is simple but hooky as hell, and the sort of thing that can trigger all manner of emotional responses before your head even gets into the game. That's the Paul I love. But a guy who's repeatedly gone out of his way to inform us that he and NOT JOHN was really the hippest member of the Beatles (at least in terms of his involvement in the London scene of the 60s) shouldn't automatically be given a pass for loading an otherwise ace tune with distracting lyrical stinkers.
Well said, Dan. I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve never found the lyrics here to be distracting—whereas to compare I find Van Dyke Parks’ SMiLE lyrics to absolutely detract, for example, and I find some of Tony Asher’s lyrics to be saccharine. Lyrics do matter, but I guess I’m realizing at this late date I just don’t listen to paul for his lyrics any more than say, EWF or Stevie. I respect but don’t agree with Faith’s assessment of Paul; I think her view comes from zooming in too close, and the needs of her larger project, which I know much about. Finally, as to Paul’s claims about being the hippest Beatle, I think there’s no question that he WAS (he helped fund the UK’s main underground newspaper; he was by far the closest to Robert Fraser and has collected a wide variety of modern art—heck, he got Ed Rauscha to do the art for “Now and Then”; he came out publicly in favor of LSD, and signed pro cannabis and pro-decrim for homosexuality). This raises the interesting question: what if Paul’s lyrics are viewed on the terms of modern art, rather than sloppy craft? What if they presage stuff like Koons? Could be bullshit, but at least it’s a new way of looking at a guy who’s been looked at so much. I’m not saying individual listeners should give Paul a pass when we don’t like his lyrics, but I am saying that, to me, there’s a real conceptual contradiction in the critical idea of Paul—a guy who is so careful with the sound part and sometimes so seemingly careless with the word part. To me it’s more interesting to consider that maybe we’re looking at him the wrong way.
Sheesh, Dan ... thanks a lot. I’m one of *those* people who plays a lot of Christmas music from the day after Thanksgiving until January 6th ... and yes, 50 points to Hufflepuff for introducing many of us to the department store Christmas music playlists. I enjoy a reasonably wide variety ... from New York Philharmonic this to the Boston Pops that ... The Chieftains and James Galway ... Sammy Davis Jr to Robert Goulet ... Ray Conniff, Mitch Miller ... Peggy Lee, Nancy Wilson ... Nat King Cole ... Bing ... Bing and Bowie ... The Pretenders, The Kinks, Greg Lake, The Pogues, Elvis, Vince Guaraldi and many others who aren’t immediately springing to mind ... all to say ... I listen to a lot of Christmas tunes each season, and this now past season I somehow ... some way ... managed to make it through the season without being aware of Wonderful Christmastime. Was it on one of my little accessed playlists? Yes. Yes, it was. But I listen to a lot of them at the office (it’s just me and my wife) so it’s possible Wonderful Christmastime happened and I was so wrapped up in whatever work thing was happening in that moment that it didn’t stick, and by the time I was aware of the music again we’d moved on to Winter Wonderland or Merry Christmas Baby or whatever. The point is, Dan ... I’d made it! I was Wonderful Christmastime free ... until this morning ... January 24th ... one month past the penultimate height of the season ... and you earwormed me. 25 points from Hufflepuff.
My recollection is probably fuzzy on this, but years ago, I came across a blog that was about good “bad” Paul McCartney songs. The gist was even when he didn’t appear to be trying; he could write a song that would be better than 90% of anyone making music. When you compare “Getting Closer” to other Wings songs or other McCartney-penned Beatles songs, “Getting Closer” seems kind of twee. But compared to other artists' B material, it’s no match. The blog made a playlist of those songs that I still play regularly. That’s how I remember it. It resonated with me with me because I love a lot B-grade McCartney songs. I played “Take It Away” on my college radio show in the 90’s a few times and once got a call that if I played it again, the caller would meet me in the parking lot to kick my ass. But “Take It Away” is a great song!
“Rockestra” from the same record will get no praise out of me other than it sounds like what local sportscasters used to play in the background while full-screen graphics displayed high school basketball scores.
For a beloved song with atrocious lyrics, I nominate the Replacements' "Alex Chilton". I love Paul and I love Alex, but this was obviously a case where PW wrote a killer chorus and then decided... fuck it, I'll make up the verses in car on the way to the studio. A gigantic whiff!
I admire McCartney’s skill as a musician tremendously, but lyrically find myself referencing Greil Marcus (“What is this shit?”) way too often. As others have mentioned, he seems to thrive when he has a collaborative approach, and some of his ear worms deliberately burrow into your brain.
That said, I HATE “Wonderful Christmas.” The only time I enjoyed it was when I had to photograph Melania at an event in December 2020, and someone played it as her entry music.
Also, your writing about Pitchfork and the world we live in as freelancers is spot on. Traditional business models for all consumable media (music, movies, journalism) have bitten the dust or are struggling (often feebly) to hang on for dear life. A lot of talented people are suffering as a result. Thankful for this platform and talented writers such as you who are keeping the faith.
Nice to see a Trouser Press shout-out...& hard to believe it’s been 40 years since I held one!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/354970099145?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=iBtlvgmTQBq&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=7fMr_RwxTVe&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
I used to have a pretty massive stack of TPs — but as with my CREEMs, my many moves eventually forced me to sell or give 'em away...
Your reaction to “Getting Closer” reminds me of my reaction to just about every song from Led Zeppelin.
As for Mr. McCartney...he is my favorite Beatle and I will defend him to my death. However, it has always been my contention (and I think this has been supported by various critics, biographers, etc.) that he has always needed a John Lennon or George Martin type who a) can tell him he’s full of it, b) will tell him that he’s full of it, and c) who McCartney respects as an equal. McCartney has always been willing to experiment and to collaborate with others, but it seems like most others are too in awe to criticize him.
I love Led Zeppelin, but for me the utter ridiculousness of Plant's lyrics is part of the fun. Absolutely agree with your Paul assessment; "Veronica," the song he wrote with Elvis Costello, is an example of how good he can be with a strong collaborator. (Though I have to admit that I never loved "My Brave Face".)
Somehow I heard a demo version of My Brave Face and really loved that. Must be on Youtube I guess.
Well put, John! As time went on, there's nothing wrong with any of that. Paul, be Paul, BUT, as you mentioned, those who were wise to pick up on Macca's peccadillos learned TO, and the WAYS to, work with them, massage them, and find ways to make a collab with Paul work! Plenty are the great, ego-ed artists around whom no one wanted to even DARE approach!
Thanks for highlighting one of my fave Macca tracks, Dan. Had we known of this common bond we might never have lost touch.
I think it reflects poorly on my character that I’m not at all bothered by these, or really any, lyrical shortcomings in rock. Low expectations are routinely rewarded.
Also, really nice haircut on Paul in the video (which appears to recycle the lighting rig from Genesis’s Seconds Out tour). Do you think he made the rest of Wings, Linda included, retain their mullets so he would stand out?
Ah, Tom — I can indeed easily imagine us arguing about this song over a beer circa 1987.
Yeah, low expectations is probably the best way to proceed with these things — I mean, I love KISS, and I've never thought, "You know, the lyrics to 'Love Gun' really could have been better'. But Paul has clearly been capable at times of matching great (or at least very good) words to outstanding tuneage, so the blatant underachievement here will always stick in my craw.
And I had that same "haircut" reaction myself upon seeing this clip; Paul probably surprised the band with it at the video shoot.
I'm also reminded of McCarney's bewilderment in the Hipgnosis doc upon learning that the sleeve for "Getting Closer" used one of that agency's leftovers. "A lobster? I kinda remember..." 😂
Oh yeah, haha!
Great doc — though I was disappointed that it didn't include THIS Hipgnosis anecdote, which Jimmy Page brought up in a 1993 Guitar World interview:
"We had commissioned them to design House of the Holy, and this guy Storm came in carrying this picture of an electric green tennis court with a tennis racquet on it. I said, "What the hell does that have to do with anything?" And he said "Racquet — don't you get it?" I said, "Are you trying to imply that our music is a 'racket'? Get out!" We never saw him again. We ended up dealing with one of the other artists. [laughs] That was a total insult — racket. He had some balls! Imagine. On the first meeting with a client!"
Haha, of the era!
Moby Grape. So many trusted friends gushing over the cherished debut, the Archies-on-dexedrine musical stylings and Up With People-recalling layered harmonies repeatedly leaving me cold - maybe the lyrics could be my entry point! Oy. Omaha. Hey Grandma. Fall On Me. Just blatantly tossed off and flamboyantly, defiantly dumb. Listen my friends? I'm gonna take a pass ;)
For me, "Omaha"'s words mesh well with the adrenaline rush of the song, even though they don't make much sense on paper. But "Hey Grandma" is definitely cringe city!
I agree with you about Getting Closer. I love Back to the Egg, BUT...
Thanks for mentioning Kolchak: The Night Stalker! I'd forgotten about that show. I loved it! I don't remember anything about it but the name, and that I found it really scary and thought I was pretty cool for watching it.
It was, and you were! Seriously, check out a Kolchak episode sometime — most of them still hold up really well!
“I saw a real fine girl at the market place
She had a nice way of walkin' and a real fine face
A voice like a man, I don't understand
I'm sorry chickee, but it's my mistake.”
The Kingbees’ big beat sound thrills me to this day. Hookiest rock I ever did hear. But if Jamie had spent maybe one more afternoon on the words…
I, too, often get frustrated with Paul's sloppy lyrics and his "first thought best thought" approach, because we all know that Paul can write a transcendent lyric when he pays attention. (If I"m sounding like John in his 1980 Playboy interview, it's because I just re-read it.)
Paul is often sloppy with both lyrics and melody. So is John. The difference lies in that John's lyrical sloppiness usually works better than Paul's, and Paul's melodic sloppiness usually works better than John's, and not that it's relevant here, George's sloppiness in both rarely measures up to either Lennon or McCartney. And of course, all three, but esp L/M, are untouchable when they actually pay attention.
That said, here's what I can contribute. I've spent the past three years in deep research on a book about the relationship between John and Paul. I spend a lot of time doing something akin to psychological profiling for my day job, and Paul is without a doubt one of the most difficult people I've ever tried to wrap my mind around because he's so emotionally reserved and cloaks his truths in layers upon layers of contradiction and subtext and sometimes, out and out... untruths.
But great art is by defintion honest, and Paul McCartney is by any defintion a great artist. Thus I tend to look to lyrics for his more honest thoughts. And what I've learned over these many hours is that it's a sure sign that when Paul tells us that a lyric is random and meaningless, that's the place to look for the truth, because as he also admits, that's where the therapy session happens. His "nonsense" lyrics aren't always "good lyrics," but they're fab resources for those of us who struggle to understand what makes Macca tick. And the more apparently nonsensical, the better. So you know, #silverlining, at least for us J/P writers....
This song is definitely not nonsense. I can easily read what he's saying in it, almost line by line, but I won't hijack your comment thread for it. Suffice to say, definitely not nonsense. Not even the cattle.
"She's my baby/Like gravy, down to the last drop/I keep mopping her up," though... yeah, I got nothing. Paul probably needs to stop trying to write sexy songs about women and stick to writing obscure songs about John.
Interesting stuff, Faith — and hijack away, because I'm genuinely curious to know your interpretation of this song, and its apparently (to me) nonsensical lyrics are still proving an impediment to my full-fledged enjoyment of it!
I would, but experience tells me you probably wouldn't like where it would take us....
I'll offer that it seems likely that the "you" in the song refers to Paul himself, in much the same way that the "you" in Hey Jude is probably referring to Paul as well, regardless of what John wanted to believe.
Here are a few Macca quotes also:
In the first episode of Paul’s Life in Lyrics podcast, he says re: lyrics, “it’s liberating, things slip out the way they would in a session with a psychiatrist.”
re: absurdist lyrics: "When you write a song, if you write them like I do, you just sort of block 'em in. Rather than go "vah-zee-day-say-ooh-wah-ay" you start to hear words. You start to find a meaning out of the sounds of the words... I didn't really think too hard about what they meant [in From a Lover to a Friend] but the interesting thing is that it always does mean something” Conversations with McCartney, p. 201 re: From a Lover to a Friend
Paul on Howard Stern, 2021, re: songwriting: it’s kind of nice cuz once you finish it, it’s like you’ve had a psychiatric session and you’ve told all of your secrets and now you feel much better. You’ve got rid of it, you know but into something nice, you know, into something you can then go, oh, here’s all my feelings in a bundle. Let’s record it.”
“When I write, I'm just writing a song, but I think themes do come up. You can't help it. Whatever is important to you finds Its way in. I saw someone writing about an artist, a painter, and he says, ‘every painting a person does is of themselves.’. Even if it's a portrait of his wife. Himself gets in it. You really can't help it, because it's you making all the marks on it. I think it's similar with songwriting. Whether you like it or not, even if you're trying to write a song for a James Bond film, something of what you feel always ends up in it.”
Conversations with McCartney, p 202
What drives me crazier than ridiculous lyrics is the case of the lazy lyrical couplet, i.e.: Black Sabbath's War Pigs..." generals gather at their masses, just like witches at black masses, & Foreigner's Hot Blooded..." you don't have to read my mind, to know what I have in mind." Lazy-ass lyricists! Btw, I'm thinking of starting an amusement park featuring the Shanghai Noodle Factory, Maggie's Farm, and the Piss Factory.
Hahaha — I'll buy an E-ticket for that one!
Dan, thanks for this. I liked it so much I'm going to Dullblog a little (even though I'm retired). Pardon the length; I don't have time to write it shorter :-).
I think Paul is misunderstood in a very particular way, and it's pretty consistent throughout his solo stuff (and even some of his Beatles catalog). What critics prefer--what they need to do their jobs, fill those column inches, and get paid--is pop songs that are texts, the richer the better. And those rich text-makers are the artists that, even when they're not doing great work, they get a lot of critical acclaim. More than a groove, more than a #1, music writers need a song to be a leaping-off point for their own thoughts.
But that's not Paul's job, as he apparently defines it. Paul's job is to make pop music, and if the lyrics are thin, that doesn't seem to bother him, because he's a music-first creator, and that means he's never going to be easy for word-first music writers to handle. As opposed to someone like Bowie, who can stitch together a bunch of interesting-sounding phrases and call it a day. I generally like Bowie, but if the job of a song is to communicate precisely, and the job of pop to communicate precisely with a wide audience, shouldn't we ding a song if the lyrical meaning isn't clear? Shouldn't writers say, "The very thing that made surrealism an interesting dead-end on the continuum of modern art, its rejection of meaning, make it fundamentally inapplicable to the three-minute pop song?" But no music writer says that, because surrealism is GREAT for them; it's nothing but entry points. If you're writing about "Life on Mars," you can write about Brion Gysin, Burroughs, etc etc etc. But when you're on deadline and the text in front of you is "Morse Moose and the Grey Goose"--a song which is primarily a groove, as "Twin Freaks" remix of "Coming Up" shows--what the fuck do you talk about? Macca's vacuity.
Let's take a clearly great opener from a clearly great Macca LP--does it really matter whether Paul's saying "Piece of cake" or "Piss off, 'kay?" at the beginning of "Too Many People"? If you're thinking of it as pure vocal texture, as sounds in a pop song--which is how I'd suspect that Paul thought of it--the difference is immaterial. But if you're thinking of it as a clue, a piece in the larger text of Paul's fight with John, Paul's mental state in 1971, or any other external story, the difference matters. But it's important to remember that the larger story is often US, not Paul. It's a framework that is being imposed by us, for our own reasons, and something that can actually obscure the work. The initial critical response to RAM is a textbook example.
I've listened to "Getting Closer" a zillion times, and never once judged its lyrics as wanting. I may be a huge dork (I AM a huge dork), but the lyrics simply seemed to be rhythmic sounds, and I tried to listen to that song on the terms of the song. As of '79 Paul had been creating pop professionally for 18 years, and was in excellent control of his tools. The lyrics on any Paul song are the ones Paul wanted, and while it's tempting to think that "he creates too much" or "he just needs a strong collaborator" or "he just needs to TRY" because we feel he should want the song to be "A Day In the Life," a rich text, that's not necessarily so. Paul doesn't need every song to be a text, any more than Brian Wilson seems to. WE do.
"Getting Closer" is just a day in the life of a guy who makes pop songs like the rest of us breathe. When he's cruising, just going where the music is taking him, his lyrics can seem thin--when if he wrote them like Lennon, to use the obvious example, there would always be biography-as-context. ("Oh Yoko -- in the middle of a bath I call your name!") Bowie. Dylan. Lou Reed -- any critical fave you name, there's that rich text thing making their work fun and easy to write about. That doesn't mean it's better as art -- or even more interesting or successful as a pop song.
I think we're not going to really get Paul McCartney until we take him on his own terms. In some Paul songs, the lyrics don't matter. Far from assuming carelessness--the guy directed Sgt Pepper!--we should at least consider that he, like Wilson, is occasionally going places where the words are just rhythm and sound. I find it helps me enjoy him more.
I don't disagree at all with your take on "what critics want," Michael, — in retrospect, the "lyrics first" fetishism of my youth was undeniably influenced by how intensely the rock critics of late 70s/early 80s Rolling Stone, CREEM, Trouser Press etc scrutinized the lyrics of whatever new album they were reviewing.
Of course, having spent a good part of my professional life writing for guitar magazines, I know that one can also quite easily write a whole album review based on guitar tones, production choices, etc., and certainly there has been no shortage of well-wrought critical ink spilled over the years on the greatness of more groove-oriented folks like James Brown, Sly Stone, George Clinton, and Nile Rodgers — all of whom I've spun a lot more over the past three decades than I have solo or Wings period Paul McCartney.
I'm less sure about the Brian Wilson's comparison. Wilson produced his strongest work when he had a collaborator who could write the lyrics and allow him to focus on melody, rhythm, arrangement and sound. In Paul's case, his collaborative efforts (both with The Beatles and after) were never so clearly defined, in part because Paul has always been a lot more interested in expressing himself verbally than Brian ever was.
And while it's unfair to expect Paul to come up with "A Day in the Life" every time out (I certainly never did), I think it's likewise impossible to "take Paul on his own terms," when this is a guy who — as Faith Current aptly put it in her comment above — "cloaks his truths in layers upon layers of contradiction and subtext and sometimes, out and out... untruths". Maybe he's being playful and whimsical on "Getting Closer," maybe he's being sloppy, maybe it's all a cover for a darker or deeper meaning, or maybe he's convinced that every idea to fall from his lips is gold. We'll never really know for sure.
Yes, his emphasis on sound and rhythm over words has often served him well — and even does so here with the chorus of "I'm getting closer to your heart," which is simple but hooky as hell, and the sort of thing that can trigger all manner of emotional responses before your head even gets into the game. That's the Paul I love. But a guy who's repeatedly gone out of his way to inform us that he and NOT JOHN was really the hippest member of the Beatles (at least in terms of his involvement in the London scene of the 60s) shouldn't automatically be given a pass for loading an otherwise ace tune with distracting lyrical stinkers.
Well said, Dan. I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve never found the lyrics here to be distracting—whereas to compare I find Van Dyke Parks’ SMiLE lyrics to absolutely detract, for example, and I find some of Tony Asher’s lyrics to be saccharine. Lyrics do matter, but I guess I’m realizing at this late date I just don’t listen to paul for his lyrics any more than say, EWF or Stevie. I respect but don’t agree with Faith’s assessment of Paul; I think her view comes from zooming in too close, and the needs of her larger project, which I know much about. Finally, as to Paul’s claims about being the hippest Beatle, I think there’s no question that he WAS (he helped fund the UK’s main underground newspaper; he was by far the closest to Robert Fraser and has collected a wide variety of modern art—heck, he got Ed Rauscha to do the art for “Now and Then”; he came out publicly in favor of LSD, and signed pro cannabis and pro-decrim for homosexuality). This raises the interesting question: what if Paul’s lyrics are viewed on the terms of modern art, rather than sloppy craft? What if they presage stuff like Koons? Could be bullshit, but at least it’s a new way of looking at a guy who’s been looked at so much. I’m not saying individual listeners should give Paul a pass when we don’t like his lyrics, but I am saying that, to me, there’s a real conceptual contradiction in the critical idea of Paul—a guy who is so careful with the sound part and sometimes so seemingly careless with the word part. To me it’s more interesting to consider that maybe we’re looking at him the wrong way.
Sheesh, Dan ... thanks a lot. I’m one of *those* people who plays a lot of Christmas music from the day after Thanksgiving until January 6th ... and yes, 50 points to Hufflepuff for introducing many of us to the department store Christmas music playlists. I enjoy a reasonably wide variety ... from New York Philharmonic this to the Boston Pops that ... The Chieftains and James Galway ... Sammy Davis Jr to Robert Goulet ... Ray Conniff, Mitch Miller ... Peggy Lee, Nancy Wilson ... Nat King Cole ... Bing ... Bing and Bowie ... The Pretenders, The Kinks, Greg Lake, The Pogues, Elvis, Vince Guaraldi and many others who aren’t immediately springing to mind ... all to say ... I listen to a lot of Christmas tunes each season, and this now past season I somehow ... some way ... managed to make it through the season without being aware of Wonderful Christmastime. Was it on one of my little accessed playlists? Yes. Yes, it was. But I listen to a lot of them at the office (it’s just me and my wife) so it’s possible Wonderful Christmastime happened and I was so wrapped up in whatever work thing was happening in that moment that it didn’t stick, and by the time I was aware of the music again we’d moved on to Winter Wonderland or Merry Christmas Baby or whatever. The point is, Dan ... I’d made it! I was Wonderful Christmastime free ... until this morning ... January 24th ... one month past the penultimate height of the season ... and you earwormed me. 25 points from Hufflepuff.
I know not of this Hufflepuff of which you speak... but now I'm sorry for not prefacing this piece with a trigger warning!
A number of Elton John songs come to mind...
I don't know what you're talking about... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBXtYY0Jf0U
Not far from Bernie's usual fare, really.
Oh for sure "Smile Away" comes to mind immediately. Is it about body odor? Excessive flatulence? Dread? Who can know?
Well technically it's breath, but...
And feet, right?
My recollection is probably fuzzy on this, but years ago, I came across a blog that was about good “bad” Paul McCartney songs. The gist was even when he didn’t appear to be trying; he could write a song that would be better than 90% of anyone making music. When you compare “Getting Closer” to other Wings songs or other McCartney-penned Beatles songs, “Getting Closer” seems kind of twee. But compared to other artists' B material, it’s no match. The blog made a playlist of those songs that I still play regularly. That’s how I remember it. It resonated with me with me because I love a lot B-grade McCartney songs. I played “Take It Away” on my college radio show in the 90’s a few times and once got a call that if I played it again, the caller would meet me in the parking lot to kick my ass. But “Take It Away” is a great song!
“Rockestra” from the same record will get no praise out of me other than it sounds like what local sportscasters used to play in the background while full-screen graphics displayed high school basketball scores.
For a beloved song with atrocious lyrics, I nominate the Replacements' "Alex Chilton". I love Paul and I love Alex, but this was obviously a case where PW wrote a killer chorus and then decided... fuck it, I'll make up the verses in car on the way to the studio. A gigantic whiff!
Totally agree. It was nice that he felt compelled to salute Chilton, but...
I admire McCartney’s skill as a musician tremendously, but lyrically find myself referencing Greil Marcus (“What is this shit?”) way too often. As others have mentioned, he seems to thrive when he has a collaborative approach, and some of his ear worms deliberately burrow into your brain.
That said, I HATE “Wonderful Christmas.” The only time I enjoyed it was when I had to photograph Melania at an event in December 2020, and someone played it as her entry music.
Also, your writing about Pitchfork and the world we live in as freelancers is spot on. Traditional business models for all consumable media (music, movies, journalism) have bitten the dust or are struggling (often feebly) to hang on for dear life. A lot of talented people are suffering as a result. Thankful for this platform and talented writers such as you who are keeping the faith.
Thanks, Glenn - your support and encouragement is much appreciated!