‘Eat At Home’: Paul McCartney’s romantic ode to normality
Throughout his career, Paul McCartney has mastered the art of the love song. From his earliest compositions with The Beatles to his latest solo efforts, from the grand declarative anthems of ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ and ‘Silly Love Songs’ to the more simple and tender messages of ‘Two Of Us’ and ‘Lovely Linda’ – he’s found a way to articulate love on every level from the humble to the sublime. But none of those songs are as casually tender as ‘Eat At Home’, his ultimate ode to love in the little things.
By the early 1970s, when Paul McCartney started working on Ram, he was clearly a man blissed out on his domestic life. In 1969, he’d married Linda Eastman and together, along with her daughter Heather, they’d started a family. In the final years of the Beatles, as the situation was becoming more distressing to deal with and more devastating for McCartney who was facing up to losing his best friends, Linda’s support and love was a life raft.
After the split, they moved out to the countryside, giving Paul space to lean on his family to heal from the hurt of the split. He made his debut in isolation as the immediate product of his depression sparked by the breakup. But as he returned to life and the joy of collaboration again, he looked around at his home and his family and found he had something happy to write about.
Ram is busy with fun along with a lot of gratitude and love. ‘Heart Of The Country’ is a sweet ditty to their farm life, ‘Long-Haired Lady’ is an ode to his wife, but it’s ‘Eat At Home’ that exists as the album’s romantic centre and one of his most unassuming yet enamoured musings on love.
“Come on, little lady / Lady, let’s eat at home,” the McCartneys sing together as the central lyric. Shrugging off the world outside and turning their back on busy social lives, the song sings of the simple joy of staying home with your partner, cooking dinner and spending time just the two of you. It could definitely be heard as an extended innuendo, but whether it’s a song about lovemaking in the physical sense or showing love in the more wholesome way of a home-cooked meal and some quality time, it still remains deeply romantic in its simplicity and ease.
Sometimes love can be expressed plainly and shown in simple sentiments. McCartney knows that well as all his best love songs have celebrated love in straightforward yet powerful ways. “To lead a better life, I need my love to be here,” he declared on ‘Here, There and Everywhere’, boiling the big feeling down to a simple fact of wanting someone around and believing that the company of a certain person makes everything and everyone better.
It doesn’t need much more than that, nor does love itself need grand gestures and extravagant gifts. All it really needs is care and time, which McCartney writes into the simple and tender invite to stay home, make dinner, and hang out – is there anything more romantic than that?
