The oddity of Paul McCartney classing one of the worst songs ever among his all-time favourites
Like a Michelin Star chef gorging themselves on ultra-processed peperami, Paul McCartney might be one of music’s finest ever operators, but his taste is seriously questionable.
When he was less than scrupulous about his own output and turned out the dreary bollocks of ‘Bip Bop’ from the 1971 Wings album, Wild Life, he even worried that such shoddy cuts might overshadow some of his greatness.
In Conversations with McCartney, he laid out the crux of his paranoid grievance. “That’s my theory, that in years to come, people may actually look at all my work rather than the context of it following the Beatles,” he said. “That’s the danger, as it came from ‘Here, There And Everywhere’, ‘Yesterday’, ‘Fool On The Hill’, to ‘Bip Bop’, which is such an inconsequential little song.”
There’s a strangeness to that sober reckoning, though: if he knew that ‘Bip Bop’ was inconsequential and worried that it might derail his legacy, then why release it? Well, perhaps the list of his 14 favourite songs of all time, that he compiled for Uncut back in 2004, can help us answer that: he has a penchant for shoddy tripe that others might like. One song on the list proves that more than any other.
‘The Way’ by Glenn Aitken is of such remarkably bad taste that Ofcom ought to step in and have it banned from all broadcast avenues, even though it was released decades ago. It’s a proto-Ed Sheeran mess of vaguely R&B-ified acoustic guitar plucking and wanky romantic lyrics. It’s one of the worst songs of all time by virtue of its abject nothingness, and you feel sorry for the souls who like it. It is music to die to and to die from.
The only reason it lives on is the utterly astounding oddity that one of the people you’re feeling sorry for is none other than Paul McCartney, a bloody Knight of the Realm for services to music.
Of course, the New Zealander caught up in it all, Glenn Aitken, can dine out on McCartney’s praise, as is his right, for the rest of his life. But to our ear, when the song isn’t corny, it’s soppy, and when it isn’t soppy, it’s quietly desperate. However, unfortunately, there is a market for this brand of brooding bollocks, which means that it is, at least, familiar.
And perhaps therein lies a hint to the answer to the mystery. As Aitken revealed in an interview with Tony Cummins, “Paul said to me, ‘Look, if you want to come to the UK, I’ll sign you to my publishing company and I will shine a light on you really just to help open a door and get your music heard by those who need to hear it.’ He was extremely true to his word.”
That’s not to rouse a conspiracy that McCartney only included the song in his list because he stood to commercially gain something from the promotion of Aitken – that would be wholly unfair on Aitken – but it does highlight a fact of life that an endless list of overly naive artists have failed to soberly reconcile: art needs an audience, and part of your job is reaching them.
You can’t just write what you consider to be a masterpiece and expect the world to come flocking to it. And no matter how effortlessly shit ‘The Way’ might be, it is an easy enough track to get played on the radio. And as someone who was caught up in the whirlwind of Beatlemania, McCartney knows all too well about that.
Unlike a couple of his former Fab Four bandmates, McCartney is a people pleaser. He’s made that perfectly clear in his recent comments about Bob Dylan refusing to play to the gallery on his current tour, whereas Macca feels compelled to play the hits. Yet, he was wrong with ‘The Way’; he might have signed and then hyped Aitken as early as 2004, but it would take six years before the singer-songwriter managed to release the track on his debut album.
None of this is to suggest that McCartney is some craven populist whose only concern has ever been shifting units. The man who helped conjure ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘Helter Skelter’ has more artistic strings to his bow than almost anyone who has ever picked up a guitar.
But that’s precisely what makes his affection for a song like ‘The Way’ so revealing. For all the avant-garde detours, tape loops and leftfield experiments, there has always been a part of McCartney that simply loves a tune people can latch onto, especially if it bolsters his bank account.
Sometimes that instinct yields immortal pop masterpieces and promotes Dylan’s golden discography; occasionally, it produces nods to the soundtrack for the waiting room at a Swiss clinic. Either way, this curious endorsement serves as a reminder that one of history’s greatest songwriters has never entirely lost his fondness for a bit of mainstream todd.
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