‘Nod Your Head’: the most unnecessary song Paul McCartney ever wrote
Paul McCartney has pretty much earned the right to release any kind of song that comes into his head at this point. Even though he has made any ill-advised albums throughout his career, the good far outweighs the bad when looking at the classics spread throughout every decade he’s been working. For every song like ‘Band on the Run’ or ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’, there are always those few songs that had no good reason to be recorded.
For some people, that qualifier is normally reserved for songs that they’ve had shoved down their throats. ‘Ebony and Ivory’ has long since been an acquired taste or absolute torture for pop fans, and whenever we approach the holiday season, there’s still a good percentage of listeners who would rather hook up a taser to their scrotum than have to suffer through hearing ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ again in a department store.
As much as those songs might be a bit toothless, it’s not like they aren’t doing their job at being a catchy tune. No, the most unnecessary song is the one that did not have the right to exist in the first place, and when looking at the construction of McCartney’s albums, there are pieces of Memory Almost Full that are very questionable.
That’s not to say it’s that bad an album, either. There is the odd song where Macca refuses to get out of first gear like ‘See Your Sunshine’, but the creativity he had after working with Nigel Godrich is on full display here as well, including making a medley in the middle of the album like he did in his Beatle days and having a few tunes that could give his other catchy numbers a run for their money like ‘Dance Tonight’.
Right as the album is coming to a close, though, McCartney pulls out two of the most grandiose songs that he ever made. ‘House of Wax’ is among the heaviest that he ever got in the 2000s and featured one of the most ripping guitar solos that he ever laid down. And right as we’re at this epic zenith at the end of the album, ‘The End of the End’ is a fine way to wrap things up. Anyone at McCartney’s age would be thinking about their own mortality, and hearing him assure everyone that they should keep smiles on their faces after he’s gone is a profound note to end the album on.
Then again, that’s what I would be saying if ‘Nod Your Head’ didn’t exist. Instead of leaving everything on a stately note that made fans think about what they heard, McCartney pulls out his Little Richard chops for a criminally short tune about wanting to see everyone nod their head to the beat of the song.
Compared to what the album was building towards, this pulls you out of the experience so hard. If we were going to equate it to a movie, this would be the equivalent of watching a high-stakes drama coming to a sombre conclusion before everything ends with some Broadway dance number before the credits roll. It might be well done, but it’s not really what any of us came here for.
It’s strange because this didn’t used to be a problem with McCartney’s albums. ‘Nineteen Hundred Eighty-Five’ is a great way to wrap up Band on the Run, and even if ‘Crossroads’ off of Venus and Mars was a bit dumb, it was easier to see what he was going for by channelling that old wrap-up music.
‘Nod Your Head’ is far from the worst thing that any of The Beatles or even McCartney himself has made, but it doesn’t bode well for any song when you can take it out of the album entirely, and the whole thing works much better. Some fans may not have wanted to hear their favourite Beatle sing about the time when he eventually passes on, but trying to put a happy face at the end of the album makes the whole thing feel a bit too cheap.
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