4/10/2023 0 Comments Wings at the speed of sound![]() As a whole, At the Speed of Sound seems like a mysterious, somewhat defensive oddity by a great pop producer who used to be a great pop writer. No one rocker on Speed matches the spirit of “Jet” or “Band on the Run” from Band, while no ballad even begins to approach the majesty of “My Love,” from Red Rose Speedway. Ultimately, this album lacks the melodic sparkle of Venus and Mars, which in its turn lacked the energy, passion and structural breadth and unity of Band on the Run, Wings’ finest album. While there is much to admire on At the Speed of Sound, it is contained in the production more than the material. (Those with feminist sympathies will also detest this celebration of scatterbrained wife-in-kitchen coziness.) Though the instrumentation is excellent, the song fails because of Linda’s colorless, amateurish singing. A surrealist concept like side one’s first-rate “The Note You Never Wrote,” “Cook” is a rockabilly nursery rhyme. Homeyness then climaxes with Linda singing “Cook of the House,” complete with sizzling pan and running water. But first the McCartneys answer those critics who lashed out at Venus and Mars‘s lovebird verses with a tract in defense of moon, June and spoon, “Silly Love Songs.” It’s a clever retort whose point is well taken the center of the song focuses on the syllables “I love you,” which Paul and Linda reiterate with the insistence of phonetics instructors, weaving the phrase through a disarmingly lovely three-part chorus. With the electronic soup-slurping sounds that open side two, one notes that it is almost time for lunch on this imaginary visiting day. But within its frivolous schema, McCartney systematically explored the textural dimensions of conventional pop music sounds. It was whimsical romantic entertainment concocted on the premise that a lot of good pop music carries no literary or mythical portent whatever. Venus and Mars, the last Wings album, was a collection of miniature pop love songs, deliberately tricked out with kiddie sci-fi and comic love lyrics. For latter-day McCartney, the megaphone, the brass band and the seedy English music hall tradition are parts of the same musical equation as rock & roll: pop and pop only. Paul McCartney became the most commercially successful of the four lads by developing into a bravura producer/arranger (especially of singles) as well as a genteel pop archivist devoted to fusing his contribution to the Beatles legacy with mainstream pop. ![]() The solo John Lennon explored (often brilliantly) the sociopolitical potential of late Sixties rock mythology, cultivating a cult of personality to become the most critically popular ex-Beatle. ![]() ![]() While some have dismissed McCartney’s music as insufferably cute, uninspired trivia, all of his albums contain at least some worthwhile music. In his post-Beatles albums, Paul McCartney has proven himself a clever miniaturist whose records resemble collages built around simple musical fragments, each of which is painstakingly produced. ![]()
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