Spoiler alert: if you’re a Paul McCartney fan with a weak heart, a receding hairline, or a “cool” kid on the debate team at high school, stop reading now. What follows won’t be a silly love song, Uncle Albert.
This being said, it should also be said that it’s almost too easy to make sport of Paul McCartney’s dyed-hair-wearing, dipshit-lyric-writing, dance-hall-melody-making, dead-wife-worshiping arse. It’s also too easy to dismiss him as some hopeless old fart who churns out crap for the time-sharing set or to sneer that he’s only one CD away from recording Paul McCartney Plays the Boston Pops Greatest Hits.
There are reasons for saying these things—and perhaps even worse—about Mr. McCartney, however. They are, in no particular order, his music, his fans, and his teeth-grindingly unhip behavior.
A devastating example of the latter is the Paul McCartney infomercial that turned up on the Home Shopping Network (HNS) last night. Actually, the network that brought you Richard Simmons Grunting to the Oldies and Mr. McCartney are perfect bedfellows.
The HNS sells cheap-ass, disposable junk, and so does Mr. McCartney, who has been ambulance-chasing his audience down an ever-more-embarrassing series of long and whining roads for some time. The Super Bowl halftime show and a liaison with Fidelity Investments two years ago were bad enough, but the Home Shopping Network?
As we said, it would be all too easy to dismiss the new CD from Mr. McCartney after that bit of wretchedness, but we are nothing if not thorough in our evaluations, so we grabbed a copy of Memory Almost Full and gave it several listens. Herewith is a song-by-song reaction with lyric samples included.
Dance Tonight—”Everybody gonna dance tonight, everybody gonna feel alright.” A mandolin-driven, early Faces-era knock off. Mr. McCartney can probably write this sort of thing in his sleep, and asleep is the best way to listen to it.
Ever Present Past—”I’ve got too much on my plate.” Poppy, perky, peppy, precious. Enough to make a person dread the ever present present.
See Your Sunshine—”She makes me feel glad, I want her so bad, my heart is beating madly for her.” Honestly. That’s what the man said. You couldn’t make this up. Unfortunately, he can. Sounds as though he dug up Linda to sing background on this one. She sings better dead than she did alive.
Only Mama Knows—”Around my hand was a plastic band, with a picture of my face. I was crying, left to die in this godforsaken place.” Why did the singer’s mother desert him? Perhaps she was psychic. If you liked “Band on the Run,” you’ll love this.
You Tell Me—”When was that summer of a dozen words? The butterflies and hummingbirds flew free. Let’s see. You tell me.” This quiet song works. What the hell. Even a blind man hits the toilet once in a while.
Mr. Bellamy—”No one to tell me what to do. No one to hold my hand. Bellamy’s got a lot to do, and I hope that you’ll understand.” So who is this Bellamy chap anyway? A piss-stained old wanker sitting on a ledge? Mr. McCartney’s cat who’s dashed up a tree to get away from this CD? Our dough’s on the cat. We hope it’s a tall tree.
Gratitude—”Well, I was lonely, I was living with a memory, but my cold and lonely nights ended when you sheltered me.” Could this be a reach out—or a reach around—to Heather? Can three-legged sex be all that great?
(Editor’s note: the five-song “suite” that concludes Memory Almost Full is already being compared—and favorably so, by Rolling Stone at least—to the majestic, mother-of-all suites that concludes the second side of Abbey Road. That comparison should be enough to make John Lennon’s ashes shed real tears.
Running five songs together at the end of a CD, as Mr. McCartney does here, doth not a suite make. Besides, the dazzling song fragments on the Abbey Road suite grabbed you with the intensity of a mainlined hit of acid and took you on a swirling ride, a ride that seemed all the more dazzling after you had caught your breath and realized that the Beatles probably couldn’t even be arsed to finish these songs. Mr. McCartney’s problem here is that he could be arsed. Now, on to the suite.)
Vintage Clothes—”Don’t live in the past, don’t hold on to something that’s changing fast. What we are, is what we are, and what we wear is vintage clothes.” Catchy in spite of the confused lyrics. Bears a second and even a third listen. Beyond that you’re on your own.
That Was Me—”If fate agreed that all of this to make a lifetime, who am I to disagree, that was me.” Approaches introspection, a state with which Mr. McCartney has always had an approach-avoidance relationship.
Feet in the Clouds—”I’ve got my feet in the clouds, got my head on the ground. I know that I’m not a square as long as they’re not around.” So who are “they”? Are their numbers legion? The “feet in the clouds” bit is clever.
House of Wax—”Lightning hits the house of wax, poets spill out on the street to set alight the incomplete remainders of the future.” Reads like a Bob Dylan parody or a college freshman’s dutiful effort to come up with something surreal for a writing assignment. A pity, because the brooding melody isn’t half bad. Could have been a decent song if somebody else had written the lyrics.
The End of the End—”On the day that I die I’d like jokes to be told.” Don’t look now, Paul, but the jokes have been circulating for some time. And in the end the love you take is equal to the music you make.
Nod Your Head—”If you think the life you’re leading is better than the life you lead, if you like the life you’re livin’, nod your head.” Daddies and Mommies off on a spree with Connor and Mackenzie at the next McCartney concert will be nodding their heads like jack rabbits humping a dirt hole to this one, but the fact remains he used to do it in the road. We doubt if Mommy and Daddy ever did, and we’re sure they’d crap themselves if they thought Connor or Mackenzie did it in the road—or did it at all.
Verdict: Memory almost full, tank almost empty.
No eardrums were harmed in the writing of this review, we hope.
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