“You’d think twice”: the one song Paul McCartney said he would never write again
The Beatles have always found ways to sidestep any kind of controversy that came their way. There were certainly times when things they said could get them in hot water, but since the Vatican has forgiven John Lennon for the comments he made about the band being bigger than Jesus, it seems like there’s nothing that they can weasel their way out of. But then again, Paul McCartney was the first to admit that there were a few songs that he wrote in the past that he should never have to write again.
Compared to all the Beatles, though, no one could convincingly believe that McCartney was the bad boy of his time. He had his fair share of moments where he could go a little crazy behind the scenes and even got arrested in Japan for possession of marijuana, but it’s hard to hear him sing tracks like ‘Not Such A Bad Boy’ from Give My Regards To Broad Street and take him seriously with that loveable smirk on his face.
But when he decided to dissolve Wings, he figured that he would challenge everyone’s preconceptions of what he was supposed to be. McCartney and RAM were not well-received by any metric in their time, but since everyone was entering a new decade, McCartney II felt like one of the most refreshing albums Macca could have made.
It wasn’t exactly commercial in the traditional sense, but since some of the later Wings albums could get too poppy for some people, hearing him get weird was all anyone could have asked for. And by making the entire thing completely on his own, songs like ‘Coming Up’ had a certain homemade quality that was enough to impress John Lennon when he was working on tracks for Double Fantasy.
“This was a different time, and the world has rightly progressed since then.”
Paul McCartney
If there’s one tune that has split McCartney fans down the middle, it’s ‘Temporary Secretary’. The song does have a decent hook behind that will have people singing along whenever they listen to it, but there are also a handful of artists that put the track on the same level as ‘Ebony and Ivory’ with Stevie Wonder in terms of the most annoying songs they have ever heard in their lives.
While McCartney still has a particular affection for the tune, he admitted that the suggestive lines about the secretary in question aren’t something he would want to revisit, saying, “Could you write a song like this today, with Me Too? I doubt it, and I wouldn’t want to. But this was a different time, and the world has rightly progressed since then. Today, you’d think twice, if at all, before you’d suggest that you wanted to keep the secretary or assistant late at night. A good thing with this song, though, is that there’s nothing overtly sexual; it’s just very tongue-in-cheek.”
But listening to Macca’s take on the tune is more about the performance than the actual lyrics. The whole album was about pushing his voice in many respects, and both this song and ‘Coming Up’ are a one-two punch at the start of the record that shows him embracing his inner David Byrne and trying on some nervy new wave music.
It’s not the traditional musical outfit you’d expect from the former Beatle, but it does fit him pretty well, and judging by the resurgence of McCartney II, he was clearly onto something, even if the lyrics weren’t the best for the time. There was the makings of a great song in here, but sometimes a great tune needs a few years of experience under its belt before people start to appreciate it.
