Moms Music- Paul McCartney

There weren’t a ton of records in my house (#momsrecords) growing up so the ones there were, hold a significant weight. There are people who venerate Paul McCartney (the local indie radio treats him as he was Jack White) and undoubtedly there’s people who don’t care for him. Not surprising maybe, I should say that I fall somewhere in between To be honest, I actually must like Paul quite a bit. As a social media experiment, I thought of the first ten favorite Beatles songs and I believe they were 6-3 Macca. I don’t love any of “those” ballads but I do love a lot of his songs and I would also add I like most of those best known Wings a lot. Like Elton John (at least to an extent), his 80s and 90s singles have a reputation as being somewhat lesser. But I do like quite a bit of his songs of this era and I will probably get around to writing about those some day. Also while I am airing it all out, I quite like the much maligned Give My Regards to Broadstreet and am always happy to find someone who shares that view. The Paul album in my house was 1982s “Tug of War”. “Coming Up” had been ubiquitous, the Wings were in the past, and now John Lennon was dead. My memory of Tug of War was that it was a very good album. Sure there’s that one well-meant but frankly terrible song that everyone knows (and inspired a great Saturday Night Live skit) but the rest is pretty great. It was a reunion with George Martin. “Take it Away” was one of my favorite songs of that age. There’s a little bit of everything that defined Macca’s career- baroque pop, straight traditional rock and novelty aside ambition. With age, it seems he’s rarely been back to these artistic heights and yet the album seems a bit lost to being obscured to earlier releases. Here Today could sit along his best work- a ballad obviously dedicated to John - not cloying but heartfelt. Get It is a classic quirky jaunt tribute to early rock n roll with Carl Perkins guesting. The Pound is Sinking is in the spirit of Uncle Albert or Band on the Run. The title track has a real world weary feel but still succeeds as a real memorable and listenable song. These days critics would probably make a pithy comment about Wanderlust sounding like an AI generated McCartney song. It does remind me of other Paul songs, though not in a bad way. It still stands on its own So here’s the thing- I think these songs stand up on their own and separately. I think any of the songs I mentioned could hang as singles. Tug of War, the album, may now be a “forgotten” classic 1982 - Columbia/Parlophone