Paul McCartney.....half an album?

I have went way farther in this thread than I ever intended so I'll make this my last try. I have no problem with experimentation, I value it a great deal and agree it is a big part of what made the Beatles the Beatles. If they had turned out eleven variations of "With The Beatles" I think it is safe to say they would not be held in the same regard as they are today. All I have tried to say here is that I think Paul has been very uneven in his writing and has released things that I don't think are up to his talents. That is just my opinion, which is worth exactly what you paid for it

 

Exactly.

McCartney post-1976 is best enjoyed by a series of personal playlists of ones own liking. Each LP had a gem or two, just put ‘em all together as you like.

My disappointment in the songs of his that I eschew usually isn’t because of the melody or the instrumentation; it’s because of the lazy rhymes.

 

The initial post in the thread presented the idea as if half of McCartney's albums don't even consist of songwriting, though, which is bogus. If someone is just saying "I don't like half of the stuff on his albums," and it's especially made clear that the half they do like consists of the things that are more conventional/commercial re contemporary pop/rock songwriting, then okay--that's their tastes, and we can more or less chalk it up to them having relatively narrow interests when it comes to music.

But it's ridiculous to present the idea as half of the albums not consisting of songwriting or to present different things as being motivated as literal filler or anything like that.

 

I'd also wonder, though, if someone doesn't like half of the stuff on McCartney's albums, yet they keep buying McCartney albums, aren't there plenty of artists where they do like everything on their albums? Why not concentrate on those folks instead?

If not, if there aren't plenty of artists where they do like everything on their albums, maybe it's time to look inward and figure out why one is so fickle, why one has such narrow tastes, why one is so picky/difficult to satisfy, etc. It shouldn't be that difficult to find artists where you like the vast majority of what they do.

 

For your information, I do not play "Bip Bop" when I go to bed.

I play it 3 times in a row when I wake up ...

 

Let he who has never skipped a track on an LP cast the first stone.

 

I can't think of a better way to start a day.

 

Which should be everyone who isn't nine years old or ridiculously fickle.

Do you ever skip tracks?

 

I frequently skip tracks. I'm older than 9, so I guess I must be fickle. I often just play one track from an LP, though - is that the same thing?

 

Good morning!!

 

I'm not someone who has ever skipped tracks when playing albums, and it would annoy me to hang out (while listening to music) with someone who would do that.

Although as I explain in the thread I linked to, I do sometimes skip tracks when listening via song shuffle, where the skip is for practical purposes. (For example, if I'm biking and some really quiet 10-minute track comes on--I'm not going to be able to hear it over all of the ambient noise anyway, so I'll skip the track rather than riding in effective silence for 10 minutes)

And then for professional purposes, I sometimes have to just listen to one track, or just a part of a track, sometimes repeatedly--for example, if I need to learn a tune or practice woodshedding a section of a tune or something. But again, that's for practical purposes.

 

Well, no one has been forced to buy albums since 2004. In the download era, one could preview half of a given track a few times and decide whether to pull down the whole album for $10 or just pick the typical 2-3 good songs for $0.99 each. Here in the streaming era, we now own every McCartney song released.

Point is, McCartney for the past 30 years has been a singles act. If I get 1 or 2 good songs from Macca projects each year I'm in a good place. Yes, he's had some years where not a single song was that good, but all-in I've got a post-1976 playlist of about 30 really good McCartney songs and that's better than almost all older groups I was into back then. I think of U2 today and I don't think they're going to give me that level of song quality for the next 30 years.

 

Fair enough. For me, it's driven by the a DJ-type impulse: listening to track A from LP 1 will make me think of track B from a different LP, and I'll end up playing bits from 10 LPs over a period of an hour. Like a radio show, or an itunes playlist, I guess.

So, I would listen to 'Arrow Through Me' from Back To The Egg, followed by 'Cuff Link' from London Town followed by the 'Blue Sway' remake from Mac II followed by 'Check My Machine' and so on. I don't need to hear the whole of 'Back To The Egg' ever again.

 

I get that via listening to song shuffle. I keep 999 albums loaded at a time (rotating some on, some off daily) on my Amazon streaming, and then I listen to individual tracks on song shuffle. That gives me my ideal radio station, with lots of interesting/unexpected juxtapositions. I don't dictate what plays that way, but that's the way I like it. I'm surprised more often that way.

That's about half of my listening, and then the other half is to albums.

(Prior to streaming, I did song shuffle the same way via iPods, and then prior to that, via mega CD changers--I used to keep a couple 500 disc changers linked together and you could do song shuffle among 1000 CDs that way.)

 

500 disc changer!

 

A catalog of a few great albums along with a bunch that have 4-5 great songs describes most long-standing recording artist careers IMO.

If the point is that he only tries to write 4/5 quality songs before finalizing an album, I don’t think that’s his process. Given how he continues to put out work constantly almost without pause over several decades, he’s not apparently running out of ideas. My guess would be that he moves really fast into new ideas and producers and others around him probably have a hard time allocating time to keep re-working everything before he just moves on to the next song/idea.

Nigel Godich certainly got a great album out of him, but look what Nigel had to endure... Paul, as great as he is, sounds like a petulant child whining about Godrich “filling up his pool with insecurities” or whatever and “sapping his energy” by giving honest feedback. Given that Paul is known for coming into the studio with tons of material, a good producer probably spots 10 good tracks and then has to battle away Paul’s desire to try to keep experimenting with something new and keep him focused on finishing the ones that have instant potential.

 

Venus and Mars is better than any of those.

 

I know this is all opinion, but there has never ever been a time when McCartney didn't release good songs, never! The time anyone and I do mean anyone would name (what time could that possibly be) there are those that love something from that time! So a statement like that could only be a personal thing.
Also those Beatle songs that I posted, I do think they are bad, not up to the Beatles standards! That is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, that's just how I feel about those songs. It's not about how many, my point was The Beatles did the same thing McCartney still does! They threw in so called sub standard songs as well!
Something like Temporary Secretary which I think is absolute garbage, cringe worthy, not even as good as Bip Bop and shouldn't even have been recorded, and definitely should have never ever been performed live! Now how many would absolutely disagree with me?
Even though I feel that way about it, I don't think it should be cut from the album! I do recognize how many people like the song, it's just not for me! The half of a McCartney album one person would get rid of, is the half another person loves!

 

I will tally that as a compliment for "Bip Bop". Even a back-handed compliment is still a compliment...

 

McCartney doesn't sound like a petulant child at all to me! He sounds like an artist that knows what he wants his music to sound like! Godrich is the one that seemed not to know how to work with McCartney! This goes back to my point, it's personal opinion that this producer got a great album out of McCartney. To me his first blunder was getting rid of McCartney's band! There are some great songs for sure, I think they would have been even better with the band treatment! It's a good album, I don't think it's great! Who's to say which songs have instant potential? I think McCartney would know that better than some young producer!

 

I agree with you.
How many albums do I have that are 'great' throughout anyway? Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden? Fleetwood Mac's Rumours? Of the Beatles themselves there are 'A Hard Day's Night', Sgt Peppers and MOST of 'Abbey Road'.
The McCartney-albums I love are uneven, sometimes half-baked; for every "Waterfalls" there's a "Frozen Jap", for every "The Pound is Sinking" there's an "Ebony and Ivory".
And I don't mind at all. Maybe he could have made 15 masterpieces instead of 25 hit-and-miss albums, but that's not the artist he is. He gets in a mood, he finds the time, assembles a band (or not) and records whatever is around. There may be 3 great tracks on an album, their might be 5 or 7, but there allways be a dud, a half-finished song. And for some people they're awful songs, but I like the sloppy 'Name and Adress' and I appreciate a strange song like 'Temporary Secretary'. My favourite McCartney/Wings albums are London Town, Back To The Egg, Ram and McCartney II; all of them 'half great', but that's how the guy works.

 

I'd gladly take half a Macca album than some of the dross others have put out. Off The Ground has copped some stick over the years but i have always loved Wine Dark Open Sea and when you have been so prolific you may still issue something a bit dodgy

 

Ha, I love Temp Secretary saw him play it at the 02, London for it's debut live performance and I was the only one around me that knew it... It's not for everyone obviously but quite an influential tune that still gets played in clubs today.
I think Macca struggled at certain times during his career for 'that' inspiration it's normally when he's following trends like Press to Play (though I like it) or follow ups to acclaimed works like Off the Ground, Pipes of Peace, Driving Rain (though I like that too apart from the god awful bonus track Freedom) that he has problems sometimes.
Each Macca album even the worst ones still has one or two gems that are hidden away and waiting to be discovered luckily at the moment he's on one of his consistent runs

 

I'm willing to bet that should we canvas which songs should be left off the McCartney albums, that there would be very significant disagreement.

 

This was John Lennon, who, to me, had much richer and wondrous records post-Beatles than Paul ever has, bar Some Time in NYC which was rather spoiled by Yoko’s input. Apart from that, Plastic Ono Band, Imagine and Mind Games we’re FAR superior to McCartney, McCartney II and Ram. Far superior.