"Every Night" by Paul McCartney is the greatest song of all time. Believe me, mama.
Question: Are we as a society man enough to face down Paul's immense body of work with a motive that's not completely mean-spirited? Have we finally gotten over the whole McCartney drools, Lennon rules thing? Is the world ready to face the fact that the man is the greatest songwriter to ever walk the earth?
The warm critical reception for the Ram re-release could indicate something... that was an album that Rolling Stone gave only THREE STARS as recently as their 2006 album guide. Yes, that's right, THREE stars. For an album with "Uncle Albert" and like ten other songs that are just as wonderful. IDIOTS!
I want to posit a theory-- and I think it's new-- for the near-constant disrespect shown to Sir Paul since he first appended his name to Lennon's. ("Disrespect" is different from "lack of love"-- obviously, Paul has many fans, probably more than any other living musician (aside from Pitbull), but I'm willing to bet that many of those people think of him as mere fluff, too.) Here goes: Paul is cheerful. Paul is whimsical. And, but for a few notable and awesome occasions, Paul is never melancholy. In its opposition to melancholy, Paul's genius is a kind of revolution, one that critics have not been able to handle for five decades. Hence, "Paul sucks."
McCartney has his dark moments, of course. I'd wager you could make a CD called "Dark Paul" to stand alongside Joy Division and the Cure, even (featuring "Eleanor Rigby," "Monkberry Moon Delight," "Junk," heck, "Yesterday," etc). But while these are memorable and beautiful songs, they do not represent, for most folks, the essence of Paul. Now, Paul is a multifaceted person. As has been noted countless times, he can write all kinds of songs in all kinds of styles-- there's an "infinite variety" to his musicality. Still, generally speaking, the dude is happy. He embraces the world, and he writes quirky character studies about the people in it. He rocks out in his solo career-- far more than George and maybe even John-- and, you better believe, GEORGE, asks us to tap our toe once or twice and have fun.
Paul's joy makes him an anomaly in the history of genius. Look at the rock stars we revere. Lennon was bitter, so of course, the critics love him. Dylan was bitter and mysterious and cold, so he might as well be a god. Kurt Cobain was a great melody writer, a la McCartney, but he was also depressed, so he's good. Brian Wilson's pre-Pet Sounds music never gets the acclaim of Pet Sounds itself, most likely because of songs like "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" that show what a melancholy genius sadsack sandbox head was.
Is it bad to be, err, sad? Nein, nein, nein. Lennon, Dylan, Cobain, and Wilson are fine, fine musicians. But McCartney might be better than all of 'em, and in a totally different way. I'm not a huge fan of the whole "equating the Beatles with peace and love" fad (they wanted to meet girls, you fools), but even I have to admit that their music has a kind of "childlike innocence" to it. This feeling, I'd argue, comes mostly from Paul, who basically willed forth the entire second half of the Beatles. He was their captain, for better or worse-- it was he who was most responsible for the "artist" tag they get today. And his Beatles songs, by and large, dealt with good cheer. (The only analogue he has in this respect is Stevie Wonder, which is probably why they collaborated on that profound dissertation on American race relations, "Ebony and Ivory.")
So what does all this have to do with "Every Night"? Well, "Every Night" isn't exactly a deep song. There's no philosophical ruminating here, no Dylan-ish allusiveness, and not even much of the artful wordplay that Paul is (or should be) known for. There's not much here at all, really. Like the other songs on Paul's first album, "Every Night" is built on spare instrumentation, and everything's played by the man himself.
What makes the song something is the feel, the melody, Paul's voice-- the supreme understanding Paul has of how to write a spellbinding love song. The guy can take a cliche-- most of the lyrics in "Every Night" have been written a hundred times before-- twist it up, and make it heavenly. Here, the verses are actually kind of pensive... that guitar line seems like it belongs in one of Paul's "fantasy" songs. But once we get to the chorus, built on the oldest cliches of all-- a super-long "OOH"-- everything is assured. That "ooh" says everything that words cannot. It makes the whole world okay. Paul does that a lot in his songs.
"Every Night" is the greatest song of all time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ-GKOe_vXY
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