22 June 2007

How are the mighty fallen

I want to hang Paul McCartney.

In my defence, this is not a recent development. I've wanted to hang that twit since I first heard "Hey Jude" and "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da" back to back. But his latest album, Memory Almost Full just takes the di'kutla cake.

The only reason I have any measure of familiarity with any of his post-Beatles work aside from the Christmas song he did, Live and Let Die, and Band on the Run is because I work at a bookshop. We have a very large CD collection as well though, and we have a muzak system. We used to be able to select our music based on whether it was something we liked and thought other people would like as well. Lately, we got a new manager who believes we should only play between four to six tracks from a selected twelve albums.

This would be okay to me if it was shuffled. I've made mix tapes with less diversity than our current playlist. However, all selections are played in 4-6 song blocks, which repeat in the same order. Which brings me to Sir Paul. Macca's latest album is one of the twelve current discs in the cycle. He's got a few decent songs on the record, but not the track our Macca Block starts with. This track is titled "Nod Your Head".

An iTunes search reveals "Nod Your Head" is also the title of songs by Will Smith, Ava Johnson, 617, Spun, the Kongregashun, and Neph-U feat. Dem Hoodstars. I would not listen to ANY of them. Macca's is no different. Contrary to my desire to avoid the hell out of this song, I will include lyrics to illustrate my point.

If you really love me baby
Better than staying in bed
If you really love me baby
Nod your head

...

Nod it up
Nod it down
Side to side
Round and round

What the hell happened?!

I'm not saying Macca knows how to write good lyrics. I never would say that, for want of never being called a stupid fucking liar. All you have to do is listen to "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime" and you'll know "Nod Your Head" is kind of a step up. But I honestly think it's a direct result of giving up drugs. That or it's a leftover of all the drugs. I'm betting the latter, honestly, because "Yesterday" was good. "Ob-la-di" was when we knew it was all going to end in tears. But "Nod Your Head" is simply inexcusable. Its only saving grace is that it's two minutes long. But that doesn't help, because next in the queue is "House of Wax", which is all manner of cliché.

Just retire, old man. Even Pete Townsend doesn't make new music anymore. He knows he's past making anything good, and he never made anything particularly great in the first place. Just effing retire.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

To ease the pain, I suggest sending your friends in at odd hours to complain about the music. How it never changes and so on and so on. Good luck.