There are seasoned songwriters who have been writing for decades who are still trying to find out what made Paul McCartney so special.
The Beatles had the kind of internal chemistry that no one could have replicated, but if you broke down the talents of every individual member, Macca was one of the best melodists of the 20th century, always coming to every session with a song that could either inspire or annoy you, depending on your preference. But even if a song sounded like nails on a chalkboard when he played it, no one could admit that the song didn’t at least get stuck in your head by the time it was finished.
Even when he was making some of his most low-profile albums, there was always a chance that McCartney would come out with the catchiest tune that you’d ever heard. He doesn’t necessarily need to have fond memories of every single song he ever played, but whereas an album like Wild Life is one of the most blatantly unfinished works he ever made, ‘Bip Bop’ is still going to be stuck in people’s heads the rest of the day once they hear it for the first time.
But for all of those great tunes, McCartney couldn’t hold himself to that standard forever, right? After all, any normal rock and roll star has those few years of being the best artist in the world before they start falling off, but that’s not what happened. Sure, Macca had peaks and valleys, but some of the finest melodies that he ever made actually came after both The Beatles and Wings decided to call it a day.
The late 1980s did have more than its fair share of outright crap, but around the time of The Beatles Anthology, McCartney seemed to get back in touch with what made him so great to begin with. It was suddenly cool to be one of The Beatles again, but no one could have anticipated him making a record that was as experimental as what he did with Nigel Godrich on Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.
McCartney would have usually reserved some of his more experimental efforts for The Fireman, but working with the mastermind behind every Radiohead production gave everyone a look at every facet of the former Beatle. There were tunes that paid tribute to his friends like ‘Friends to Go’ and even the occasional tune that sounded modern like the hidden track ‘I’ve Only Got Two Hands’, but after years of trying to sound current, ‘English Tea’ was the kind of tune that brought back all of the whimsy of his early days.
Not everyone is going to be a fan of Macca’s ‘granny shit’ music, but he always felt that he was going to be remembered for writing tunes like this, saying, “I think it’s very me. The Beatles made very English-y kind of music. A lot of our stuff was American-focused, but then we started to work on some stuff that was more us. So that’s particularly me, that ‘English Tea’ type of thing. It was this fascination with how people speak.”
And regardless of how you feel about the more twee version of McCartney, it’s not like he isn’t good at making these kinds of tunes. Most people may have preferred if he leaned into his rock and roll roots like John Lennon did every now and again, but it’s sometimes good to have a balance of a song like ‘Helter Skelter’ with ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ when listening to one of his records.
None of The Beatles was a one-trick pony by any stretch of the imagination, but McCartney’s love of those whimsical tunes was a lot more interesting than having to hear him be the balladeer every time he stepped up to the microphone. Are they cheesy? Absolutely, but sometimes people need a little bit more cheese in their diet than sticking to the hearty rock and roll stuff.
