Obla-Delights: What makes Paul McCartney’s “granny songs” work so well?
Part of the appeal of The Beatles was never knowing what you were going to get next on any record. Rubber Soul never sounded anything like Sgt Peppers, and there’s a good chance that no one could have equalled what the Fab Four did when making Abbey Road. It was all about just playing off one another and making the best of every composition, but there seems to be more than a little bit of disdain thrown towards Paul McCartney whenever he played his “granny music”.
Because let’s be honest: McCartney could get more than a little bit corny when he wanted to. Although he wrote fantastic joint efforts with John Lennon that resulted in creative watermarks like ‘A Day in the Life’, there are also tunes like ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ that continue to divide the room no matter what generation you’re a part of.
But, really, is it all that bad? ‘It’s not rock’, I hear some people saying. Yeah, and it’s not trying to be either. From day one, McCartney never claimed to be a snob about one singular genre of music, so when he tried his hand at playing the kind of 1920s-style vaudeville songs that have been spread across his discography, it was just another flavour of influence he had to work with.
Despite having every ounce of Chuck Berry or Elvis Presley’s influence scrubbed from its DNA, a tune like ‘Ob La Di Ob La Da’ at least gets people on their feet for a good reason. No matter what people like to say about McCartney’s melodies sounding too simple or mind-numbingly catchy in an advert jingle sense, it’s half the reason why The Beatles worked the way they did as well.
McCartney’s history of granny music goes far beyond just the standard vaudeville song. He had been aware of that style ever since first hearing his dad playing piano around the house during his youth, so it wasn’t surprising seeing him first coming up with ‘When I’m 64’ when he started dreaming up his own melodies.
No matter how catchy they were, though, Lennon always hated it, with Geoff Emerick recalling in Here There and Everywhere on ‘Ob La Di Ob La Da’, “That was definitely the case with the recording of ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.’ One moment he’d be into it, acting the fool and doing his fake Jamaican patois, the next minute, he’d be sulking and grumbling about how the song was more of Paul’s ‘granny music shit’.”
Discussing ‘granny songs’ can be contentious, as opinions differ on which songs truly fit the label. Sure, ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ might qualify as “granny shit”, as Lennon famously put it, but does that mean we overlook other ballads he created, like ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘For No One’? While upbeat tunes may appeal to many, it’s hard to find a grandmother who wouldn’t appreciate the timeless beauty of ‘Yesterday’.
And it’s not like McCartney isn’t aware of how cheesy it is, either. Listening to him emulate Tiny Tim on ‘Honey Pie’ or later asking Linda to dance with him in the middle of Wings’ ‘You Gave Me The Answer’ at least lets us know that he’s kind of in on the joke. If anything, that’s probably why he leans into it even more, because even he knows that no amount of style-shaming was going to get in the way of him following his muse.
But for those that are claiming these songs take away from Beatles albums, allow me to pose one question: Do you really think that none of his bandmates do it too? Looking through their respective solo careers and even Beatles years, both John Lennon and George Harrison have had their moments of making whimsical songs that the older variety of listeners could relate to, with ‘Being For the Benefit of Mr Kite’ and ‘You’ respectively being sentimental to the point of parody.
The pace of the album also works a lot better when having McCartney on there to deliver a happy tune. Just look at some of the worst-received albums of his solo career, like Driving Rain, and even those fans will tell you the reason why it didn’t work that well: because McCartney didn’t break out his lighthearted side.
However, McCartney’s more lighthearted music was far from hindering The Beatles’ career. If anything, it just gave them a lot more variety of music to choose from. It would have been impossible for someone to focus on Lennon’s artistic dreams and Harrison’s spiritualism in between the rockers, so having something to lighten the mood is what kept those Beatles records so balanced.
He’s even become a lot stronger in the area as the years have gone on, whether it’s writing his own jazzy ballads like ‘My Valentine’ or putting every bit of whimsy that he’s laid down on the tape in the past half-century and channelling it into one tune on ‘English Tea’ from Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. McCartney’s ‘granny’ side might certainly be an acquired taste for some, but if the artist sounds like he’s having fun in the studio, it’s hard for that energy not to be at least a little contagious.
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