Wings/70s Paul poll

[The Slider]

I could, on any other day, have picked ten completely different songs (apart from BOTR, Jet and Silly Love Songs - they will always be in the ten) and, besides Wonderful Christmas Time, might have picked ALL of them if I'd not been limited.

It's remarkable how much of a downturn he took in the 80s.
But there are almost no major acts from the 70s that had a good 80s.
They all had stinkers in my book.

I'll allow Kate Bush, Elvis Costello and Tom Waits but the rest - meh at best (Joni, Neil) and stinky usually (Bob, Bruce)

[Carl's Son]

I was putting together a playlist of songs for a show recently. I was looking for songs about breakups/relationship strife. I included a couple of Beatles songs and then I also had My Brave Face from Flowers in the Dirt but nothing from Wings.

It got me thinking how Paul seems to be particularly singled out and sometimes even reviled or ridiculed as a purveyor of "Silly" love songs.

Maybe I'm Amazed is obviously a classic essayed at a time when Paul was at a low ebb and the gratitude for the woman who pulled him through shines in the song.

After that he still wrote some good love songs but mostly from a perspective of domestic bliss. The closest he comes to writing about any sort of heartache or dischord that I can think of in this period is Single Pigeon. It's a charming little tune about being kicked out after a fight but it's not a man writing about a love in jeopardy. The tone is very much, this is just a row, I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself but it'll be fine.

Beatle Paul had his ups and downs with Jane Asher and had songs like You Won't See Me or I'm Looking Through You. Wings Paul only seemed to write happy songs. Either because his marriage was free some such upheaval or because he didn't want to write negative songs about his wife and mother of his children, especially when so many of the public were so down on her anyway.

There's no reason why there shouldn't be songs about stable relationships and steady love but over the course of a decade in Wings I guess it proved a slightly narrow focus and maybe that's why people get on at Soppy Macca the silly balladeer. He never got a devastated break up song or sneering kiss-off into his repertoire. A bit more light and shade, some emotional heft.

I'm sure as it is he's much happier as things stand and we're happier for him but I bet he would've had a killer break up album in him if his marriage had fallen apart in the Seventies.

[Diamond Dog]

Explains why Chaos & Creation was much darker.

[Quaco]

After that he still wrote some good love songs but mostly from a perspective of domestic bliss. The closest he comes to writing about any sort of heartache or dischord that I can think of in this period is Single Pigeon. It's a charming little tune about being kicked out after a fight but it's not a man writing about a love in jeopardy. The tone is very much, this is just a row, I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself but it'll be fine.

Great post and I think you're right. About 'Single Pigeon', its potential power is further diminished (IMO) by him playing with words again. Early in the song, he says "did she throw you out?" but then later in the song, just to be a little silly, he says "did she turf you out?" It's not pleasant to hear him say this. It sounds like he's just dallying with the song, when it's quite poetic in places and could have been more powerful.

It's interesting, the question of whether people who are stable romantically are able to write great sad or bitter songs. It shouldn't have to be a felt feeling to be able to access it. Just as actors are able to tap into the well of disappointment and sadness from a life lived, so ought a songwriter to be able to. But there is something a bit different about popular songwriting, where you are expected to feel it too, because you are both the writer and the performer. If you are only one or the other, it matters less.

[Goat Boy]

Domestic bliss is a mojo killer.

We all go through heartbreak and we can remember and relate but when you look back at times when you were heartbroken from a period of contentment them it can really be like looking at someone else, similar to looking back through different periods of your life and thinking "who was that person?"

I mean you can still channel it but it's dimished so you need to act and Macca isn't that good an actor otherwise he'd act like less of a dick

[clive gash]

Domestic bliss is a mojo killer.

We all go through heartbreak and we can remember and relate but when you look back at times when you were heartbroken from a period of contentment them it can really be like looking at someone else, similar to looking back through different periods of your life and thinking "who was that person?"

I mean you can still channel it but it's dimished so you need to act and Macca isn't that good an actor otherwise he'd act like less of a dick

Who is this person?

[Goat Boy]

[Goat Boy]

Pansy

[sloopjohnc]

Domestic bliss is a mojo killer.

We all go through heartbreak and we can remember and relate but when you look back at times when you were heartbroken from a period of contentment them it can really be like looking at someone else, similar to looking back through different periods of your life and thinking "who was that person?"

I mean you can still channel it but it's dimished so you need to act and Macca isn't that good an actor otherwise he'd act like less of a dick

Extreme emotions always work better in any art form because there's more inherent drama.

Contentment or malaise is hardly best topic, although some folks have written some good songs about being bored.

[clive gash]

Kills 70s Macca stone dead.

[Minnie the Minx]

At work I have YouTube rolling on with an occasional time when I think ‘what’s this? It’s awful’ and go and look at what’s playing. The other week I was sat with my toe tapping thoroughly enjoying myself and I went and looked, finding to my horror that it was Ram, an album I’ve enjoyed cursing for years. ‘Uncle Albert’ had me in tears.

Paul has caught up with me - god help me.

[WG Kaspar]

Judging by the songs in this list I think I prefer Bad Company.

[Quaco]

Domestic bliss is a mojo killer.

We all go through heartbreak and we can remember and relate but when you look back at times when you were heartbroken from a period of contentment them it can really be like looking at someone else, similar to looking back through different periods of your life and thinking "who was that person?"

I mean you can still channel it but it's dimished so you need to act and Macca isn't that good an actor otherwise he'd act like less of a dick

I agree. But I would have thought PM should have been able to do it. He was, after all, not the music-as-therapist/autobiography writer than Lennon was; instead, he seemed to approach everything as a craftsman -- whether it be a '40s pastiche, a hard-rock song, or a folk song -- so you'd think he'd be able to craft that too.

I think there were multiple issues. He got lazy, undoubtedly in part due to his position in music at the time. So while he could have put his craft to tapping into real emotion for a certain song (as Lennon did for "How Do You Sleep", ironically not one of his more autobiographical songs), he half-assed things and got by on his innate talent. There was also the Lennon factor, where he wanted to do something different than what JL was doing, which was always big big emotion, so PM didn't really specialize in tapping into the deep stuff. Also, as has been noted, everything he did was going to be analyzed, so he wanted to put out a feeling of wedded bliss, both for his family's sake and as an advertisement that it's OK to be normal and happy.

If he had been a Broadway writer and had to write a great lost love song by Friday, I think he could have done wonders. But in his rock star position, he had no such mandate.

[Goat Boy]

He shoulda just went weird.

[Quaco]

Yeah! Like maybe done a Scott Walker.

I do like his actual odd things (not the things that he does thinking they'll be odd). That's why "Kreen-Akrore" and "Loup" were on my list. Both really strange things, but not self-consciously so.

[Goat Boy]

I can just picture Macca with a hammer banging a dead cow or summat

"Dooooooooo!" *thud*, *thud*, *thud*, "dooooooo!" *electric saw*, "alright!"

[Matt Wilson]

I can just picture Macca with a hammer banging a dead cow or summat

"Dooooooooo!" *thud*, *thud*, *thud*, "dooooooo!" *electric saw*, "alright!"

At the same time giving the thumbs up sign.

[Goat Boy]

That would be a great sleeve!

Sorta like the follow up the Butchers one.

Oooo, meta.

"doooo!"

[Quaco]

It would have been a giant slab of tofu at that time, but yeah.

[Goat Boy]

GOD HE'S SO LAME