It Isn't Silly at All

Paul McCartney & Wings - Silly Love Songs

Jun 18, 2021

Today is Paul McCartney’s birthday. I have no idea how old he is, and I’m not going to ask the internet because it doesn’t matter. If art is an attempt at cheating death (as some have philosophized), then Sir Paul has achieved immortality.

The Beatles were the first band I recognized. My dear mother loves them. She has a print portrait of them on her bedroom wall still to this day. And as goes with being a Beatles fan, she has her chosen side in the John / Paul battle, and it’s very definitely Paul.

As a child, I of course sided with her in this epic songsmith battle, but as I grew older and started doing all the things that teenagers with impulse issues and anti-authoritarian views do, I very definitely became a John fan. He just seemed wiser, cooler, more street smart and Tomorrow Never Knows is a great psychedelic moment.

Then, something happened.

And what that was came from the realization that apart from The Beatles, I decided John Lennon sucks. I don’t like any of his solo stuff, and looking at his life, he comes off as a pompous ass and pretty shitty guy all around.

But Paul…

Y’see, as I’ve grown older and been through enough shit and watched things slip through my fingers, I’ve been left with the thought that as much as it sounds saccharine, love really is all that matters. In the end of this spastic ride through birth and death, the only thing that will ever matter is the feeling of accepting love in its purest, most vulnerable places.

Love should make you feel giddy and sappy and unashamed even when you think it’s silly. It’s the perfect antidote to the ego that is always getting in your way.

McCartney knows this. Lennon could wax poetic all he wanted about imagining all the people, but here’s the truth:

You think that people would’ve had enough of silly love songs I look around me and see it isn’t so

Because we can’t. We have to always be able find our way home. The world can be so cruel, and fantastically so, and therefore we always need to return to the center, somehow even just for a brief moment and reflect on the overwhelming sensation of being open to another person, or even just being open to the world.

There’s no other song I can think of that understands this better, and does such a remarkable job of it. No other song could get away with the chorus I love you. For one, you can’t distill things any less than that. But two, the reason that works is because McCartney is a brilliant musician and in this song has written one of the all-time greatest bass lines. This song is driven by rhythm (which is how one should love, with more feeling and less thinking) and I can’t help but think of a few things about that, which have nothing to do with love and everything to do with the final word in the John vs Paul battle:

- Paul was way more in tune (no pun intended) with the world going on around him; he’s not writing for himself, he’s writing for the moment, which is reflected in that bassline with its clear nods to disco and reggae.

- The fact that the bass is the lead (and not the guitar, the instrument John is most associated with) is a hilarious snub.

- This was a direct response to Lennon slagging McCartney off for his penchant for writing love songs, and for it McCartney was rewarded with a gold record, and a #1 in the US Billboard Hot 100 for 1976.

Really, there’s more to McCartney, such as his first two solo albums post-Beatles, which deserve a whole other series of entries here, really. But today, in this messy world, I just want to remind you of this pure and brilliantly simple pleasure of a song.

EXTRA BONUS!

Last year to commemorate Juneteenth, I put together a Youtube playlist of HBCU* marching band moments. Enjoy!

Happy Juneteenth, y'all

SERMONS!

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