POLL: How do you rate Paul McCartney's "Pipes of Peace" album?

My suggestion for the next album would be Chaos and Creation.

Also, are we going to have a thread for Electric Arguments?

 

I count Broad Street as the next album.

Pointless covers----oddly of then-recent stuff too (Ballroom Dancing is slightly stronger here but why do it?)

No More Lonely Nights is a worthy top 10 (his penultimate---when do you get to use that word?------top 10 in the US).

All those cheesy-worst-of-the-80's-production covers of Beatles songs are offensive----not to mention his oh so casual singing on those numbers----and that horrible cheese-wiz sax.

That said----i always liked Eleanor Dream------if i edit out the cover of Eleanor Rigby at the beginning.

 

The problem with doing Chaos next is that I've already done New, Memory Almost Full & Driving Rain - if I do Chaos, I won't really have a latter-day McCartney album left...

...aside from Electric Arguments, of course.

My initial thought was just to keep it to the "main" McCartney albums, but as long as participation remains high, I think I'll include all albums which one could reasonably count as part of his "regular" discography. These "lesser" albums would include: Broad St (largely remakes, but all new recordings), CHOBA (no originals, but all new studio recordings), Run Devil Run (ditto, but with a few new originals), Kisses (ditto) and Electric Arguments (tho not a "Paul McCartney" album in name, it most certainly is one). I will absolutely NOT include any of his live discs, classical works, or "experimental" works, as I don't think it makes sense to compare those with "traditional" albums of pop/rock vocals (even "Kisses" sorta pushes that envelope).

 

If that is your opinion of the Broad Street album, I'd can only imagine what your opinion of the film is....

Arnie

 

I think Paul summed it up two years after it came out (48:30 mark):

 

I've never understood the disdain for this album.

Pipes of Peace is much much more consistent than Tug of War, and I would argue that it's even more ambitious. Pipes of Peace, the album, very eloquently makes it's case for love, peace and understanding in a pop context for all ages. What's so wrong with that? If I had to guess, the album isn't 'adult' enough for the Me Generation. In many ways it's sort of like McCartney's album for kids, and a lot of adults can't bear that sort of innocence. The Man (co-written with Michael) almost sounds like a lost segment from Free to Be You and Me. That doesn't make it bad, it just makes it less palatable to people who think the ABBA-ripoff song Tug of War is intrinsically more substantial, just because it has the word 'war' in the title.

I'm certain that Pipes of Peace will undergo a major reevaluation one of these days.

 

It's not as bad as some say, it does have coherent songs, and I like the r&b flavor that it has.

Certainly not as bad as the weird and sometimes incoherent and unlistenable McCartney II!

 

Lower Tier, AND One Of His Worst (the descriptions make me pick both). I like "Pipes Of Peace", "Say Say Say", and "So Bad".. but most of the rest is dreck (in fact, the three songs I liked here are also close to dreck). This album smells of rejected leftovers from TUG OF WAR. There are some other songs I can deal with -- "The Other Me", "Keep Undercover" and "Average Person" have good tunes, but the lyrics are ABYSMAL. And "The Man" makes me want to puke.

 

I've always thought it was an improvement over Tug of War. "The Man" could have been another Macca & Michael hit had it been released as a single. I like it more than "Say Say Say." "Through Our Love" is one of his finest deep cuts.

 

Tug Of War was my first McCartney LP. This was the second. Bought pretty much on release day. I agree that a mixture of the 2 albums would make for the better listening experience, but I always liked POP. Don't get me wrong, I knew when I bought it that it didn't come near TOW, but I still think it's a really good album.

Again, I'm looking forward to the Archive edition of this and TOW. Hopefully 'coming soon'!

 

I played this for a buddy tonight so I kind of got to experience it through fresh ears. It was interesting how someone with a great musical ear reacts to this album without any preconceptions. He thought it was a wild, brilliant album and very quirky. People have criticized Paul's lesser albums so much that even big fans like me start to believe it.

I'm very much of the opinion that if albums like this had released with different marketing and a different name, the consensus would be a much higher general opinion. People are so skewed not only by others opinions but also their own preconceptions/expectations. We like to put artists in a box. I agree with those who said the R&B influence and musical theatre influence probably turned off the rock n roll crowd.

 

That is very interesting, and suggests that a re-evaluation could happen with the reissue. Did they have any favourite songs?

 

A few nice songs (Sweetest Little Show, The Man, For Our Love) and some strange choices. One of the ''avarage'' McCartney-albums.

 

I actually voted solid effort for this one. Some years back I certanely would have given it a lower rate. It was a big disapointment following the rather great Tug of war. However a while back I revisited and actually liked it. It s extremely well crafted-admittedely some filler stuff but also some real good ones. The title track and Say, Say, Say are-imo-undisputed pop-classics. Yeah I like the Jacksson collabration. There are more ear-candy here.So bad is a rather lovely pop/RnB ballad for instance. The album might be a bit on the MOR side but in a good way. Time has been rather good to Pipes of peace an album that I guess will benefit from the coming de-luxeedition

 

The thing with POP is to just immerse yourself in the gorgeous, honeyed sound of it! It's a very warm, soothing album.

 

Voted One of Worst. I find it to be the most depressing Paul album other than Off The Ground. "So Bad" is a solid MOR song that grows with repeated listens. Everything else is fair to poor, including "Through Our Love" and "Say Say Say," which others seem to really enjoy. I never understood the appeal of the song "Pipes Of Peace;" it struck me on first listen as excessively twee and ponderous and never grew on me a bit, which is not like Paul at all.

The worst part of Pipes Of Peace, more than even the trite lyrics and dinky melodies, is the way the album is supposed to tie in with Tug Of War, by being about peace. The whole point of Tug Of War wasn't war at all, but struggling through life. It's one thing to make a bad album, but Paul had to tar a good album in the process. Now every time I listen to Tug Of War, I hear that idiotic "no no it's a tug of peace" in the back of my head.

 

By Paul's standards, it's definitely lower tier. Most of side one skates by, but side two falters badly with "The Man," "Tug of Peace," and "Through Our Love."

For whatever it's worth, I actually like "Hey Hey." It's a throwaway, but at least it's a funky throwaway.

The only major triumphs here are "Say, Say, Say" (better in its extended remix) and "Keep Under Cover" (which would have fit nicely on Tug of War).

 

so bad, it's laughable

 

Seems a lot of people don't like OFF THE GROUND, which surprises me. I think OTG is Paul's most underrated album at this point.

 

One observation I'd like to make about MrJinks' poll.... even if an album is "one of his worst, avoid at all costs", you still may have a couple of songs you like on it. But the next choice is "lower tier -- a couple of songs worth revisiting"...

So what do you do when you want to say an LP like this is indeed one of Paul's worst (even though there are a couple of songs worth revisiting?).

Just seems to me that this prevents people from voting for "worst"... unless they dislike EVERY song!

 

Flip a coin.

Arnie

 

I might be wrong, but the metaphor of "rolling time up in a ball" might be a reference to Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," a poem about a guy trying to convince his mistress to give it up, given the fact that time is running out. It's the poem that begins, "Had we world enough and time/This coyness, lady, were no crime." Then, near the end, the chap says, "Let us roll all our strength and all / Our sweetness up into one ball." Which, as I tell my students, is a sexual image, innit.

Or perhaps Paul is thinking of T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," a poem about a guy who fails to ask "the overwhelming question" of his beloved (that is, will you marry me) and hence broods about all the lonely time he has before him. In a line generally understood to be an ironic allusion to Marvel's, Prufrock observes:

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”

 

Interesting. Thanks for posting.

It certainly seems possible that Paul was referencing one of these poems, especially 'To His Coy Mistress'.

 

Definitely interesting speculation - thanks for posting. At least in your example, someone is rolling up two things (strength and sweetness) into a ball, while Paul is rolling up only one (time). However, given Paul's penchant for having weaker or lazier lyrics sprinkled throughout his oeuvre, and his general lack of reference to high-falutin literary works, I personally remain unconvinced...

The "here we go, through our love" and "we're going through our love" lines remain utterly asinine to me, comparable to "how can I hope to reach your love" (despite the fact that he's stuck "here forever in your loving flame") years later.

I'm not exclusively a "lyric" guy, and I can certainly appreciate "awopbobaloobop" as much as the next guy, but I like lyrics that are smart or clever or insightful or nonsensical (in a surreal way) or at least - at a bare minimum - MAKE SENSE. When something is glaringly dumb, I can't help but notice. "When love is all that stays, only love remains" is, IMO, neither insightful, nor clever, nor intelligent ("til the word has lost it's meaning," indeed!). It's lazy. Substitute another word. "When cats are all that stay, only cats remain" - yeah, well, DUH! Blue is the sky and the sky is blue...

I know I'm not the only one to speculate that Paul uses some variation of "love" as a "placeholder" in songs, and sometimes it just gets a little on the silly side. There are so many examples of this, it's tough to know where to start. "If you're part of my love, don't leave home tonight" (Tiny Bubble) - huh? What's that supposed to mean? And it's the FIRST LINE of the song! How about "lovers of love" in arguably one of his best solo songs ever (Somedays) - are there "haters of love" out there?

Paul didn't use to have the word "love" in his songs so frequently. How many of his songs on the Let It Be album contain the word "love" - how about ... none. How about Abbey Road? Aside from the masterly close to "The End" and "love her a lot" in "Her Majesty" - that's it. How about Magical Mystery Tour? Zero, again. "The Word" is also used sparingly in Paul's Pepper songs - it's in the title cut, Ringo's tune, "LOVEly Rita" and "things that she loved" (Getting Better), but that's it. Even the White Album has only four of Paul's songs that use a variation on the word "love"...

And, back in those days, he used the word - or variants of the word - in ways that sounded natural, logical, sensible. Really, how many awkward Beatles songs of Paul's have him using that word in a way that doesn't make sense?

But, starting with Ram, "love" started to appear more and - to me, at least - in phrases that were far clunkier. I can handle "her love came through and brought me round" (Dear Boy) just fine. "I find my love awake and waiting to be" (Too Many People) -- hmm, maybe. But when we get to "bring the love that you feel for me into line with the love I see and in the morning you'll bring to me love" (Eat At Home), my ???-meter is activated. One song later, I'm treated to wisdom like:

Ah love is long, love is long, love is long
Ah sing your song, love is long, love is long
Ah when you're wrong, love is long, love is long
Win or lose it, winter, summer, love is long, love is long​

That is just grade AAA-Stupid, in my book.

Next album, we get "some people can sleep at nighttime believing that love is a lie [WHO?] I'm only a person like you, love..." (Some People Never Know). Is that 2nd "love" really necessary there, or is it just filling an empty space? Maybe the former, maybe not. How 'bout a b-side I quite like, "Little Woman Love" in which three of the first four lines use "love" as the ending rhyme (and the 4th uses "glove")? Isn't that a bit lazy?

Would "you gave me loving in the palm of my hand" really have used "loving" if he hadn't already used "something" in the previous line? "No Words" would practically have no words if "love" wasn't cluttering up nearly every single line. It just goes on and on in Paul's stuff. He can "take a pound of love and cook it in the stew", he can take you to the "lovers zone" be "at the center of a love vibration", take you "down the path of love", spin his "motor of love", ask you to "never make me choose between the love I've got and the love I'd lose" and so on. As you can clearly see, I've grown tired of that.

"Here we go, through our love" just annoys me more than almost all the examples above, because its such a nicely produced, lavish ballad with so little to say...

 

^^^^John and Paul though would LOVE to turn you on...