C/D Paul McCartney Solo

listening to Red Rose Speedway now. you know, i love Linda's voice. beautiful angel voice. when i think about how people went through the trouble to isolate her vocal tracks so they could shit on her and imply that she somehow didn't deserve to be making music with Paul McCartney -- god it makes me so fucking mad

Back to the Egg is an excellent album and yes, this song is great

Linda harmonies are usually A+

Red Rose Speedway might be underrated? I need to listen some more but it all sounds good to me.

Love Big Barn Bed and Single Pigeon.

Red Rose Speedway is an all-time favorite of mine. Side B is just about perfect. And personally I'll take Paul/Linda/Denny harmonies over those by Paul/John/George anytime.

https://www.stereogum.com/2257275/vinyl-artwork-rejected-by-paul-mccartney-for-being-too-unflattering-is-being-auctioned-for-charity/news/

hahaha that is horrific

Yikes

lmao

Watching Wingspan (on YT) which I haven’t seen since it aired in 2001 – it’s absolutely a love letter to Linda. He’s interviewed warmly by Stella, and it’s full of warm (at times treacly) remembrances of their relationship.

The opening 45 minutes that covers Paul and Linda’s unorthodox musical romance, the formation of Wings and rather brave tour of English universities is fascinating. Notwithstanding his own massive celebrity, Paul’s partnership with Linda (replete with open air tour buses with baby cribs on the roof and seafaring recording studios in the Virgin Islands) even now scans as a somewhat unlikely path to superstardom.

Have to imagine that it wasn’t a coincidence that he married Heather Mills a year later either.

Mary, not Stella, I think.

To his immense credit the world's biggest star tried to be as 'umble as possible.

Yep, Mary

I always thought Junior's Farm was nonsense lyrics, but it's actually a clever little thing about capitalism, isn't it? Looking forward to One Hand Clapping coming out.

whenever people ask him about his lyrics he tends to respond with stories about his life at the time which seem only vaguely relevant at best - which makes me think he writes based on his current vibes first and if some meaning coalesces out of it he just sort of shrugs and moves on if he even notices

so frustration with the business end of the beatles could end up with a song that is anti-capitalist almost by mistake

I also have a whole thing about him being neurodivergent and linda giving him permission to stop masking around her and just be his weirdest self which combined with the drugs ended up producing some of the loopiest lyrics of all time (which even at their most nonlinear tell you more about him than he ever will in plain language - much like how his off script ramblings in interviews are his most revealing moments but are easily dismissed)

I'm not the first person to make this argument, but only the most famous white pop star on earth could've written "Another Day," "The Heart of the Country," and these other rumpled, lived-in songs celebrating domesticity and hanging out at home with the wife and kids. Because this was Paul McCartney, it's as much a public pose as Lennon's radical chic period but no less convincing. Maybe more.

"Another Day" stands out because it isn't really a happy song - there's an interview somewhere with Paul saying it's kind of apiece with "For No One," which is a different story but also has melancholy and less specifically heartache at its core. I'm not sure how much of "Another Day" was done by 1969 (just the music or the lyrics too), but I don't think it was that common for a major male rock star at that time to write a song that's about a woman's existential dread, and even when you came across one of those, it's likely it wasn't all that sympathetic to the character involved.

maybe it would have helped him if he'd politicised his back to the land smoke weed every day thing in the same way lennon politicised his beatles withdrawal existential crisis heroin dick flick thing - but it's never been paul's way. instead he did the look how happy I am without you thing which was much more effective at pissing off his intended target but gave nothing for the radical chic rock intelligentsia to chew on

"Another Day" stands out because it isn't really a happy song - there's an interview somewhere with Paul saying it's kind of apiece with "For No One," which is a different story but also has melancholy and less specifically heartache at its core. I'm not sure how much of "Another Day" was done by 1969 (just the music or the lyrics too), but I don't think it was that common for a major male rock star at that time to write a song that's about a woman's existential dread, and even when you came across one of those, it's likely it wasn't all that sympathetic to the character involved.

― birdistheword,

I belive him, but his arrangement is so cheerful!

rock critics were like there goes paul with his happy sappy another day because they don't listen and don't care about women and were like who needs to listen to this pussy whipped sadsack when we have real feminists like john lennon to tell us what's up

honestly the way paul writes about women is so striking and unusual for a rock star in a way that I've only seen people starting to acknowledge recently and it's so weird considering how clueless he can be IRL about gender and feminism related things

I think Linda and "Linda" as concept are the only prisms through which he understood women as anything other than groupies, though Jane Asher was her own woman too.

mother mary, lovely linda, famous groupies

he's also loved old ladies since he was young but maybe they're all mary too

actually maybe if he *doesn't* want to fuck them they suddenly become more interesting to him as human beings which is a weird kind of sexism but he's a weird person

It was noticeable, seeing him live at Glastonbury, that there wasn't a single woman on stage, and only one in the long list of worky thanks (the one in charge of the big screens). It got me thinking how rarely he has collaborated with women in his solo career other than with Linda. Maybe he just doesn't trust himself, the old horndog.

i definitely don't hear "another day" as cheerful or celebrating domesticity, it's more ambivalent than that, there's some melancholy to it as paul apparently claimed

every time this thread gets bumped i just think about how "silly love songs" is one of the greatest songs ever recorded

i definitely don't hear "another day" as cheerful or celebrating domesticity, it's more ambivalent than that, there's some melancholy to it as paul apparently claimed

― ufo,

The bridge for sure.

Yep - “sad, so sad, sometimes she feels so sad / alone in her apartment she dwells, till the man of her dreams come to take her hand”. It’s all existential dread and quotidian numbness. Nothing remotely domestic about it.

oops “comes to break the spell” is it?

the most remarkable thing is how he's taking the perspective of so many women he fucked (over) for whom he was the man of their dreams

for no one is kind of like a bridge between another girl and another day in terms of perspective and empathy and I like to think it demonstrates real growth

I mean those guys were in a bubble in a hugely sexist society from the age of 18 onwards, so it’s unsurprising they would have warped views of relationships from a current perspective.
I like the anecdote that the French horn player saw the chart music titled “For No One” and thought the group had arrogantly decided it was going to be a number one hit.

what I can't decide is whether it's secretly a bit queer or just sexist for mccartney to be offloading his emotional baggage onto all these semi-fictional women he sings about

it wasn't just a bubble it was both a surrogate family and (semi-open) polycule

I don't think any of them were ever not weird about relationships during or after that and how could it be any other way

Thread takes a turn.

All this talk about Paul and fucking kind of makes me realize how devoid of carnality his post-Beatles music is. There are a few – “Eat at Home” is a particularly hilarious one. But by and large, there is very little lasciviousness to Solo Paul and I wonder how much of that was what fired the resentment of the likes of Xgau.

why do you think I love "Press"?

that's it yes

some people never forgave linda for taking the biggest slut of the 60s off the market as it were

I assume that goes for a lot of the ostensibly straight boomer rock guys too since they would never shut up about how pretty he was and how he should have done better (married jane and kept fucking around I guess)

You are proving my point, Alfred.

"For No One" is def. ice cold. But I am failing to see evidence that Paul was some toxic misogynist if that, indeed, is what is being suggested by some here.

I always thought Junior's Farm was nonsense lyrics, but it's actually a clever little thing about capitalism, isn't it? Looking forward to One Hand Clapping coming out.

― timellison, Saturday, 4 May 2024 20:47

?? There's one line about inflation, that's all I can see. The poker stuff is about Beatle/Apple breakup negotiations, innit

re: carnality: "Hi Hi Hi!"

^^^ definitely about fucking a banana

Let's not forget Fuh You

Actually, let's forget Fuh You

https://i.imgur.com/4dR9bVN.gif

(xp) I only wish I could.

https://i.pinimg.com/474x/78/d2/d4/78d2d413459d6f77bf405e78b050065e.jpg

coming up!

I don't find any of the Beatles a bit attractive. Maybe young George? But he would've sulked me to death.

not sure why I posted that it seemed vaguely relevant to the fucking discussion

there are some really hot ones out there but this isnt a thirst trap thread unless the thirst traps are songs which he has plenty of