“He does it every time”: the Paul McCartney song Noel Gallagher called atrocious
Anything that Noel Gallagher touches usually comes packaged with a Beatlesque touch. As the various comparisons made between The Beatles and Oasis mounted up, Noel never hid his love for the Fab Four, and he was more than happy to let his brother Liam cosplay as John Lennon half the time that they were onstage. He had limits when it came to whimsy, though, and he knew that he had endured enough of Paul McCartney’s whimsical antics by the start of the 2000s.
Granted, the lighthearted granny music songs that Macca was known for will always be an acquired taste. As much as some people see ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ as a little piece of good-natured dark humour centred around a man killing people, most would probably want to put a wooden stake through their ears rather than have to suffer through listening to it again. John Lennon, Ringo Satrr and George Harrison were just three of many who detested the track.
McCartney would never roll over and stop following his muse because a few people didn’t like it, though. Half of the reason many of his solo tunes work is because of how jovial they sound from the speakers, whether it was the soft-hearted ballads like ‘Bluebird’ or the childish aesthetic of ‘Let ‘Em In’.
While McCartney substituted a lot of his whimsy for passable dad rock throughout the 1980s, Flaming Pie was the first time he actually managed to capture that Beatles magic again. ‘Beautiful Night’ is among his finest ballads, and ‘Calico Skies’ feels like the spiritual successor to what ‘Blackbird’ had done all those years ago.
When making Chaos and Creation in The Backyard, though, Nigel Godrich got the former Beatle back to sounding like his old self, especially on ‘English Tea’. Complete with pennywhistle solos and a pep in its time, this practically sounds like McCartney took all of the twee sounds of ‘You Gave The Answer’ and ‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’ and smushed them together for one song.
It’s hardly anything to get angry about, but Noel had no desire to go back into lighthearted territory when talking about the record, saying, “There are a few songs I like [but] ‘English Tea’ is atrocious, and he does it to you every time. But it kind of lives up to the hype and justifies him being on the road next year.”
Then again, are we going to ignore all of the lighthearted songs in Oasis’s discography, too? Sure, Noel wasn’t the person he was when he made Definitely Maybe or What’s the Story Morning Glory, but it’s hard to think that tunes like ‘Digsy’s Dinner’ and ‘She’s Electric’ came from someone who hadn’t at least listened to ‘Good Day Sunshine’ a few times.
Still, both of the Gallagher brothers seemed to be partial to what Lennon did with his ballads rather than McCartney. Whereas Macca wanted to tell an innocent little story every time he got behind the piano, Noel wanted to take fans on a journey with his words, even if not all of them made the most sense.
