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Silly Love Songs
b/w Cook of the House
b/w Cook of the House
| Released: April 1976 (Capitol) Written by: Paul McCartney Produced by: Paul McCartney Album: Wings at the Speed of Sound |
| U. S. Billboard Charts: | |
| Hot 100 | 1 |
| Adult Contemporary | 1 |
The story goes like this: McCartney got grief from John Lennon (among others) for only writing lightweight love songs. This song was not only McCartney's response to that, he also pokes a little fun at himself. Not to mention its a fun little disco-ish song and a big hit, at that. In Sir Paul's own words (from Billboard):
But over the years people have said, "Aw, he sings love songs, he writes love songs, he's so soppy at times." I thought, Well, I know what they mean, but, people have been doing love songs forever. I like 'em, other people like 'em, and there's a lot of people I love -- I'm lucky enough to have that in my life. So the idea was that "you" may call them silly, but what's wrong with that?
The song was, in a way, to answer people who just accuse me of being soppy. The nice payoff now is that a lot of the people I meet who are at the age where they've just got a couple of kids and have grown up a bit, settling down, they'll say to me, "I thought you were really soppy for years, but I get it now! I see what you were doing!" [big laugh].
By the way, "Silly Love Songs" also had a good bassline and worked well live.
Musically, the song doesn't follow any traditional pop music form, which isn't surprising for McCartney who always likes to piece things together. There's all sorts of instrumental breaks, chorus, countermelodies, varying instrumentation, and the verse only appears at the beginning and end of the song. But it's all catchy as hell and I can't hear the song without thinking of the summer of 1976, when I spent a lot of time outside with my Radio Shack transistor radio. The local West Texas stations played this song a lot that summer.
by request, from another blog:
ReplyDeleteThe first girl I ever had as a "girlfriend" was named Janet. Smartest person in our fifth grade class. I bought her a 25 cent bracelet out of a gumball machine and asked her to be my girlfriend while we were playing on the monkey bars at recess one fine day. She said "Sure." Later that week, I bought her a copy of my favorite song at the time, Wings "Silly Love Songs" and said it was our song. We chased each other at recess and stood next to each other when it was time to line up and head back into class but that was pretty much all we did. It wasn't enough for her and she broke up with me the following Friday. On that next Monday, she gave me back the bracelet and the record. Both were scratched really bad. Like my heart.