Paul McCartney's Bad Notes

Paul McCartney has already gone into the musical history books as one of the greatest songwriters the UK has ever produced. It's why he is now Sir Paul, knighted for his services to the music industry.

When he was just 23 years old he wrote Yesterday, one of the most recorded songs of all time. He also gave us classics such as Hey Jude, Eleanor Rigby, Penny Lane, Band on the Run, Maybe I'm Amazed, Blackbird. I could fill this article with lists of his works of genius, but we all know those songs.

Less well known is that he's also written a few shockers, bad days when he seemed to have forgotten he was supposed to be a musical genius. These clunkers have mostly been quietly forgotten. It's just as well.

I've never forgotten them so here is my list of ten of the worst of Paul MacCartney's bad notes so you can suffer along with me.

1. Mary Had a Little Lamb

The children's nursery rhyme set to music complete with a chorus containing the never-to-be-forgotten refrain: la, la, la, la, la, la. This from the man who wrote Blackbird about the black civil rights issues in sixties America.

Apparently, Macca released this as a riposte to the BBC who banned his previous single, Give Ireland Back to the Irish (bad song 3), for being too political. So he gave them a nursery rhyme.

What on Earth was one of the greatest songwriters of the 2oth and 21st centuries thinking? The band are even stroking lambs and we have chickens in the video. Watch, listen and weep.

2. We All Stand Together (The Frog Song)

I suppose, in his defence, he did write this song for the animated children's film, Rupert and the Frog Song. His crime was he then released it as a single. Under his own name.

He has since said the song was meant to be in the same vein as Yellow Submarine, a catchy children's style song that adults could enjoy. He failed miserably. It's equally bad for adults and for children. It's not so good for frogs either.

Be embarrassed for him by re-living this nonsense. I challenge you to get through more than fifteen seconds of this utter rubbish before hitting stop.

Was this really the same person who gave us The Long and Winding Road?

3. Give Ireland Back to the Irish

1972. Northern Ireland was in the midst of what was euphemistically called the Troubles but was, in reality, a civil war. 479 people died in that year and many more were injured in the worst year of violence of the entire conflict.

What no one needed was a multi-millionaire pop star, living in blissful seclusion on an idyllic island in Scotland, to wade in with a dirge accompanied by simplistic lyrics for a highly complex and dangerous political situation. The song appeared to lend support to terrorism and gang violence. Fuel, tinder and flames come to mind.

The song was banned in the UK and there was a de facto ban in the US. Following a terrorist atrocity, McCartney belatedly realised his lyrics were 'clumsy' (and the melody blandly awful) and pulled it from a forthcoming compilation album and his live setlists.

We all love Paul McCartney but sometimes he likes to test us by displaying rank insensitivity and bad timing.

4. Wonderful Christmastime

John Lennon had a justified solo success, some years before this song, with Merry Christmas War is Over. Its meaningful lyrics were set over haunting jangling diminished chords. McCartney obviously thought he would have a go too.

Where Lennon sang of his hopes of peace for black and white, old and young, McCartney was simply having a wonderful Christmastime, ding dong, ding dong. Truly truly truly appalling. Do not press that play button on the video below if you value Paul Mac's reputation.

5. Spies Like Us

Macca wrote Live and Let Die for the 1973 James Bond film of the same name. It was a masterpiece, a brilliant McCartney classic with dynamic swirling structures and tunes of different exciting rhythms running throughout the song in the mould of his other classics such as Band on the Run and a Day in the Life.

Spies Like Us was a 1985 comedy film with Chevvy Chase and Dan Ackroyd. Rotten Tomatoes gave the film 32% and I'd give McCartney's theme tune 2%. I'm being generous. It was not to be a reprise of the genius of Live and Let Die. Far from it. The video is equally excruciating.

6. Ebony and Ivory

A single performed with Stevie Wonder covering racial inequality, what could go wrong? While you can't knock the message they were trying to give, you can knock the delivery and childish approach to such a serious topic from a lyrical and musical perspective.

Why can't we just live together like the black and white keys on a keyboard? Thanks, Paul, we hadn't realised it was that easy. And there we were, all thinking things in the real world were a little more difficult.

Why two heavyweights of the 80s music scene couldn't have come up with something deeper and meaningful to address such an important area is a mystery. In case you missed the point and had the IQ of a baby mosquito, they were dressed in black suits with white shirts and Wonder sat on giant black piano keys while McCartney walked on the white ones.

How to understand racial issues for two-year-olds. I guess that's better than nothing but the message was totally lost in layers of sugary schmaltzy banal cheese.

7. Temporary Secretary

This is a song you either love or hate. Rolling Stone thought it one of the best post-Beatles songs but I can only assume they confused the song with something else, Jet or Another Day maybe. Or perhaps they were smoking something that day.

McCartney sings the song in an atrocious fake American accent (why?) and with zero enthusiasm. The song features weird muddled synthesisers that sound like a 1980s video game. There are creepy lyrics about finding a temporary secretary who will be sweet and sit on his knee. And she can be a belly dancer too. Enough said.

8. Check My Machine

What the hell is going on here? McCartney II is generally considered one of his worst albums and this tune is the worst of the worst. Even worse than Temporary Secretary.

McCartney has a wonderful voice with a wide range but chose to sing this one in a falsetto chipmunk-style voice.

9. All You Horse Riders

To be fair, this song was considered too bad even for McCartney II and was left off the original album. The reason I've included it here is that it was subsequently added as a bonus track on later re-releases of the album.

Bonus? I can only think it was included to try to make the other songs sound a little better. It even had a clip-clop backing beat, in case you missed that it's something to do with a horse race.

It should have been wiped from the original recording tapes forever just in case anyone thought it a good idea to add it as a bonus track at a later time. Too late.

10. Wild Honey Pie

To show that McCartney was always capable of an atrocious song here is one from the Beatles' White Album which foreshadows the other nine on this list for sheer awfulness.

Wild Honey Pie is a largely forgotten song since most of the other tracks on the White Album are works of timeless genius and also because it's outdone by Lennon's Revolution 9 in terms of being utterly awful.

It's little more than McCartney screeching Honey Pie out of tune over an irritating tinny guitar riff.

Wild Honey Pie is, mercifully, only 50 seconds long. It feels more like 50 minutes of utter ear pain.

Flawed Genius?

No one's perfect and Sir Paul McCartney is no different. Even musical geniuses have their moments of poor taste. It was difficult to find ten of his songs that were truly this dreadful, most of his poorer songs fall harmlessly into the mediocre bucket.

But let's finish by remembering some of his greatest pieces of music; the genius of Let it Be, the wonderful rock and roll of Back in the USSR, Get Back, Hi Hi Hi and Only Mama Knows and the exceptional pop of Say Say Say and Back Seat of My Car as only McCartney can do.

Maybe we can forgive him a few stinkers for all the others he gave us.