“People hated it”: Despite its charm, Paul McCartney thinks fans never forgave him for ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’ remake
It takes a lot for any fan to turn their back on their favourite artist. After all, this is the person responsible for making some of the best songs that they had ever heard, and unless they have spread hate speech or started going against their moral principles, it’s hard to think of any reason why someone would drop them like flies based off of one song. While nothing was going to dull Paul McCartney’s star rising after The Beatles’ breakup, he admitted getting severe pushback from some fans on this lighthearted romp.
Then again, did anyone have the same expectations for Wings as they did with The Beatles? It was clear that Macca was starting something new without the help of the Fab Four, and if most fans didn’t like the band jamming for the hell of it on Wild Life, they sure weren’t going to like what McCartney had in the pipeline when he started breaking out the old 1920s-sounding material as well.
Granted, you’d think that any McCartney fan would be used to his whimsy by now. Even though not every one of those respective songs had the same kind of punch that the rockers had, there’s an indescribable charm that comes from McCartney getting nostalgic for the past, especially when he breaks out the softshoe routine in the middle of a song like ‘You Gave Me The Answer’.
There are moments when that cheeriness goes too far, though. ‘Let ‘Em In’ has divided fans for years because of its dopey lyric sheet, and as much as Paul and Linda’s love for each other was palpable onstage, hearing her take a lead vocal on the song ‘Cook of the House’ off of Wings at the Speed of Sound is the kind of experiment that feels a bad karaoke session.
If McCartney wasn’t winning fans over with his softer material, he was about to see some fans give up on his interpretation of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’. While it makes sense for him to do a version of the classic nursery rhyme since he was taking his children on the road, many fans took one listen and felt that any edge that McCartney had in him got scrubbed clean the minute he cut ties with John Lennon.
Even when reminiscing on his lighthearted material, McCartney remembered how many people were beyond pissed off to hear him singing a children’s song, saying, “I saw nothing wrong in doing songs for my kids. Wings’ ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’ was like that. I saw nothing wrong in writing songs for Linda. Some people quite liked that. Other people hated it and probably never forgave me for it.”
But for all of those rock purists disappointed in the former Beatle, it’s not like the song doesn’t have its charm. McCartney is giving it his all when talking about the lamb whose fleece was white as snow, and given the fact that his daughter is named Mary, it’s actually one of the most wholesome songs to ever come out of a rock and roll legend.
So even if he gets ridiculed for going soft on record, ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ deserves a special spot in history in the same way that ‘My Love’ does. Both are completely different songs, but given that The Beatles always preached that all we needed was love, hearing McCartney have that same enthusiasm in a song for his kids may make him one of the single coolest dads in the genre.
