It’s Just Not Cute Anymore

Do you remember the Beatles?

I do, but just barely. I think I was about six years old when the band broke up, and I’d only known about them for a year or two at that point. At the time, I was a fan. My older sister had a couple of their records — I know that Meet the Beatles was one of them.

I may have lost my taste for their music by the time I was 11 or 12, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t accept the fact that they hold an important place in the history of popular music. My seventh-grade music teacher certainly never failed to point out something they (or their producer) did that no one else had ever done. And everyone knew not just the band, but the individual members:

• John Lennon was the sardonic, iconoclastic, political one.
• George Harrison was the spiritual one.
• Ringo Starr was… I don’t know. The one who wore a lot of rings.
• And then there was Paul McCartney, “the cute one.”

These aspects of their individual personalities can be seen in their lives and careers in the years after the band broke up. Lennon married a conceptual artist and became deeply involved in the peace movement. Harrison’s interest in Eastern religion can be heard on albums like All Things Must Pass, Living in the Material World and of course The Concert for Bangladesh. Ringo continued to be Ringo, I suppose.

McCartney remained cute. He formed the band Wings, and included his wife Linda in the group, not because she could sing or play an instrument (she couldn’t — great photographer, though). He just liked having her around. That’s cute. Wings did release Band on the Run, which many people viewed as a pretty well-done record, but for the most part during the 70s and into the 80s he put out some cute stuff, like “Silly Love Songs,” “Let ‘em in,” “Cook of the House” and “Coming Up.” He did the theme song to a James Bond film, featuring the memorable line “But in this ever-changing world in which we live in”. That’s either stupid or cute, and given the source, I guess it was generally deemed cute. He made that god-awful film with Tracey Ullman, and she put him into a video she made, in which he mugged it up as the cute one.

Well, now it’s 2007. McCartney turned 65 earlier this week. And what are we seeing on the eye of hell these days? McCartney hawking his new single in an advert for iTunes.

Everybody gonna dance tonight
Everybody gonna feel alright
Everybody gonna dance around tonight

Everybody gonna jump and shout
Everybody’s gonna sing it out
Everybody gonna dance around tonight

If he was ten years old and he performed that for his dada and mum, that would be cute. He isn’t ten years old. He’s 65. This is just sad. Does he really want to be remembered as the composer of “Hey Jude,” “Yesterday” and this?