Album Review – Rings Around the World by the Super Furry Animals

Album Title: Rings Around the World
Artist: Super Furry Animals
Release Date: July 23, 2001

Alternate Route to Vulcan Street
Sidewalk Serfer Girl
(Drawing) Rings Around the World
It's Not the End of the World?
Receptacle for the Respectable
[A] Touch Sensitive
Shoot Doris Day
Miniature
No Sympathy
Juxtapozed with U
Presidential Suite
Run! Christian, Run!
Fragile Happiness

All songs written by Super Furry Animals

It may seem from the artists I have mentioned in my blog so far (the Beatles, Queen, Randy Newman, Bob Dylan, Genesis, the Police, etc.) that I am stuck in the past as far as my musical tastes are concerned. There is some truth to this, for a number of reasons, e.g., I have been living in Asia since the mid 1990s and so get a little less exposure to new artists in the English-speaking world, I am interested in music history and so tend to look back more than forward, and I get enough variety in my listening pleasure out of all the older artists I listen to, so I can’t really be bothered to investigate newer artists. But there are a number of newer – or at least post-1990 – artists that I listen to, such as Radiohead, Muse, the White Stripes, Shakira, Amy Whitehouse and Outkast, just to name a few. One of my favorite (relatively) recent artists is the Welsh band Super Furry Animals. They are one of the few who I have liked sufficiently to make an effort to collect nearly all of their albums.

One thing that is interesting about the Super Furry Animals is that there is no real consensus among fans and critics as to which is their greatest – or most important or most significant – album. In this sense they are more like, say, Genesis than Queen, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan or the Beatles, all of whom have one or a few albums which are almost universally cited as their best. For SFA, as they are sometimes called, several albums have been called both their best album and their worst by different reviewers (opinions of Genesis albums, particularly the 1980s ones, are similarly varied). I myself like all of their albums to one degree or another, and I would have trouble picking one as my favorite. So for my first SFA review, I will just do the first CD of theirs I bought, their 2001 album Rings Around the World.

Rings Around the World was the Super Furry Animals’ fifth studio album, but it was their first on a major label. Several publications called it “near perfect” or their “best album to date”, though NME said it was “their worst”, even if that still meant it was better than a lot of other bands’ work, and Allmusic, despite a generally positive review, considered it less inventive than their previous albums. It was chosen by Mojo as the best album of 2001, which is where I first heard of it (and the band). My curiosity sparked by the Mojo review, I download MP3s of a few of the tracks off a P2P service. I liked them a lot, and so I went out and bought the CD (incidentally proving that music sharing can actually increase music sales – I wouldn’t have bought the CD if I hadn’t been able to download and listen to some songs first). While as I noted above I have since bought most of their other releases, some of which I like at least as much as this album, I still enjoy this one a lot.

As a number of reviewers and SFA themselves have noted, with a major label budget the band could indulge themselves, resulting in an eclectic, glossy production which ran a wide gamut of sounds and styles. While some critics and fan seem to feel the lush production meant the album had less of an edge than some of their independent releases – and I can understand their point of view, as lo-fi albums like Mwng appeal to me just as much as this one – I like complicated productions if they are done well, as I think is the case here. It gives the album a great deal of variety, which is something I always like in music. One of my favorite tracks, “Receptacle for the Respectable”, actually goes from prog rock to melodic pop to death metal in four and a half minutes, and also features Paul McCartney chewing celery in homage to his doing the same on the Beach Boys’ song “Vegetables”. Though no other single songs cover such a wide range in styles, there is still plenty of variety to be found elsewhere on the album. Another standout track, “No Sympathy”, starts out with acoustic guitars and Crosby, Stills and Nash-style harmonies (though it’s hard to imagine CSN singing “you deserve to die-ie-ie-ie…”) and then breaks down into jagged techno. The hit single “Juxtapozed with U”, another track I particularly enjoy listening to (though I know some fans of the band don’t care for it), is a very catchy “plastic” soul tune. Influences cited for the title track, “(Drawing) Rings Around the World” (which I also like a lot, though it is perhaps a tad repetitive) include Status Quo, the Beach Boys (clearly a big influence on the album as a whole) and ELO. Other notable tracks include “Presidential Suite”, which has an entertaining set of lyrics about the foibles of Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin attached to a chorus with a great melody, the 1960s pop-style “It's Not the End of the World?”, and the sharply ironic “Run, Christian, Run”.

One of the great strengths of this album, and for that matter of much of the Super Furry Animals’ work, is the strong melodies, most of which are the work of lead singer and chief songwriter Gruff Rhys (though the others have also written some quite melodic tunes, particularly on 2005’s Love Kraft). All of the songs mentioned above have excellent melodies – in fact, all the songs have good melodies, and many have very good if a bit wacky lyrics. The album’s eclecticism helps keep things interesting, especially since you never know when things will take a sudden left turn. On this album in particular SFA's influences are readily apparent, and yet they manage to update and adapt them in a way that sounds fresh. While this may not necessarily be the best or most representative Super Furry Animals’ album, I can attest to the fact that it’s a good place to start.

Note: I didn’t attempt to do a song-by-song review this time around, though maybe some day I’ll come back and tack one on.

Roger Taylor of Queen

Last week, Brian May of Queen turned 65. This week is the birthday of his bandmate Roger Meddows Taylor, born July 26, 1949, who is turning 63. May and Taylor are not only the only members of the band to remain active – Mercury died in 1991 and Deacon retired in 1997 – but they were also the first two to start playing together, starting in 1968 when Taylor joined Smile, the group started by May and Tim Staffell. So May and Taylor have been playing together off and on for well over 40 years, and judging from recent appearances they’ve made, they still enjoy doing so.

Like May, Freddie Mercury, and John Deacon, Taylor was not only highly skilled in his chief instrument, but he could play several others, including guitar and keyboards. Also like May, he sang lead vocals on a number of Queen songs, chiefly ones he wrote himself. In fact, his vocals were featured even more prominently than May’s. Even though he wrote fewer songs in the group’s early days, he sang almost all of the ones he did write, unlike May, who only sang a small proportion of his songs. Furthermore, while both he and May did a lot of the backing vocals, Taylor sang the high harmonies, which gave his voice a prominent role even on songs where lead vocal duties were entirely handled by Freddie Mercury. Examples of this include the high notes on songs like “In the Lap of the Gods” and “Bohemian Rhapsody”. At least one reviewer that I read remarked that Taylor had a better voice than the lead vocalists for many other bands; of course with Freddie Mercury available, he didn’t use it as often as he might otherwise have.

Taylor was also a talented songwriter. In fact, Queen is one of very few groups in which every member wrote hit songs for the group. As I noted in my article on Brian May, in the group’s early years, the songwriting was dominated by May and Mercury. Taylor wrote at least one song on each album from the beginning (unlike John Deacon, whose first composition appeared on Queen’s third album), but it wasn’t until the late 1970s that he (and Deacon) started writing two songs per album. Also, though Taylor wrote some excellent album tracks such as “Tenement Funster”, “Drowse” and “Sheer Heart Attack”, he didn’t write any of the group’s hit singles (though he did famously get his “I’m in Love with My Car” onto the B side of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, thus earning a lot of royalties). But in the 1980s, Taylor was writing as much as Mercury or May – sometimes even more – including hits such as “Radio Ga Ga” (the song that Lady Gaga got her name from), “A Kind of Magic”, “The Invisible Man”, “Breakthru” (except for the opening section, written by Mercury) and “Heaven For Everyone” (though this song was originally written for his band The Cross and only later reworked for release by Queen). He was the main writer of Queen’s holiday song “Thank God It’s Christmas” (with some help from May) and he was the primary lyricist on the hits “One Vision” and “Innuendo”. He also wrote the hit single “C-lebrity” from the Queen + Paul Rodgers collaboration, as well as the album's other single, "Say It's Not True". In fact, Taylor wrote or was at least one of the main writers of the title track and/or lead single for all but one of Queen's albums starting with 1984's The Works (though I should note that on his first two hits, "Radio Ga Ga" and "A Kind of Magic", Mercury helped to polish the songs to bring out their hit potential). There was a noticeable change in Taylor’s songwriting style in the 1980s when he started using keyboards to compose, as the resulting songs were often very different from the guitar-based songs he wrote in the 1970s (though he continued to compose on guitar in the 1980s and afterwards). Like May, Taylor occasionally has addressed social and political issues in his lyrics, such as on “One Vision”, “Heaven for Everyone” and “Say It’s Not True”, as well as some of his solo tracks.

Taylor also has had the most prolific solo career of any of the members of Queen. He has released four solo albums and a long-delayed fifth one is supposedly nearing release (a single from it was released back in 2009). In the late 1980s, he also formed a band called The Cross in which he played rhythm guitar and sang lead vocals, and he wrote almost all the songs on their first album, though he contributed much less to their second and third albums. None of the other members of Queen released nearly as much solo material (unless the 10-CD Freddie Mercury box set is included, but most of that consisted of demos and unfinished material). However, except for a few songs here and there, I haven’t heard much of Taylor’s solo material, so my list of his best songs (including a few which others had a hand in writing, but Taylor wrote the vast majority of) is taken from his work with Queen, including the Queen + Paul Rodgers collaboration between Taylor, May and vocalist Paul Rodgers. In the future I may do an updated list incorporating some of his best solo tracks.

The Best of Roger Taylor
(All songs written by Roger Taylor and performed by Queen except where otherwise noted)
Tenement Funster (Lead vocals by Taylor)
I'm in Love with My Car (Lead vocals by Taylor)
Drowse (Lead vocals by Taylor)
Sheer Heart Attack
Fun It (Lead vocals by Taylor and Mercury)
Rock It (Prime Jive) (Lead vocals by Taylor, except opening section sung by Mercury)
Action This Day (Lead vocals on some lines by Taylor)
Radio Ga Ga
Thank God It's Christmas (Written with assistance from May)
A Kind of Magic
Breakthru (Intro written by Mercury)
These Are the Days of Our Lives
Heaven for Everyone (First recorded by the Cross, later re-recorded by Queen; lead vocals on Cross single version by Taylor)
C-lebrity (Queen+Paul Rodgers)
Say It’s Not True (Queen+Paul Rodgers; lead vocals by Taylor, May and Rodgers)

Modern Times Rock 'n' Roll (Lead vocals by Taylor), Coming Soon (Lead vocals on some lines by Taylor), The Invisible Man (Lead vocals on some lines by Taylor), Small

Brian May of Queen

Brian Harold May, born 65 years ago on July 19, 1947, is a musician, an animal rights activist and the holder of a PhD in astrophysics. He is best known as the guitarist for Queen. Queen was a highly versatile band that performed songs in a wide variety of genres. But two distinguishing features that were present in most (though not all) of the band’s songs, making them instantly recognizable as Queen songs. One was Freddie Mercury’s voice, and the other was Brian May’s guitar. In addition to his guitar playing, Brian May, like the other members of the group, wrote numerous songs and also occasionally played keyboards. His singing was a key part of the vocal sound for which Queen was famous, mostly as a backing vocalist for Freddie Mercury, but on some songs or parts of songs as a lead vocalist. He was largely responsible for ensuring that the band remained connected to its hard rock roots, as he contributed most of the band’s heavier, guitar-oriented songs, though he also wrote a few of the group’s best known ballads, and made occasional forays into other genres, such as the Dixieland-style “Good Company” and the vaudeville-style “Dreamers Ball”. May also was the first member of the band to address more serious topics in his lyrics on songs like "White Man", "Put Out the Fire" and "Hammer to Fall", though Roger Taylor likewise included some social commentary in his later lyrical contributions.

Brian May played in a number of groups in his youth, before founding Smile in 1968 with his school friend Tim Staffell on vocals and Roger Taylor on drums. Smile evolved into Queen in 1970 after Staffell left and Freddie Bulsara, who soon took the stage name Mercury, took over on vocals, soon after which the group settled on John Deacon as their bassist. As noted above, May’s guitar was a key element in the group’s sound from the beginning, especially the complex guitar harmonies he created on many tracks. Notably, many of his guitar parts were played on his Red Special, an electric guitar made by May and his father when May was in his teens. At the time Queen’s career took off, May was close to finishing a PhD in astrophysics, but he abandoned it for his music career, only completing it in 2007. In recent years he has also been active in promoting animal rights, particularly in fighting for a ban on fox hunting and the culling of badgers.

On the group’s 1970s albums, May and Mercury dominated the group’s songwriting, with May averaging about four songs per album, including hits and major album tracks like “Keep Yourself Alive”, “Now I’m Here”, “‘39” (the only song I know of to deal with time dilation, an effect of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity”), "The Prophet's Song", “Tie Your Mother Down”, “We Will Rock You” (which remains one of Queen’s best known songs), and “Fat Bottomed Girls”. An example of his versatility as a composer can be seen in his songs for 1975's A Night at the Opera, which included "sci-fi skiffle" ("'39"), hard rock ("Sweet Lady"), progressive rock ("The Prophet's Song") and Dixieland trad-jazz (the aforementioned "Good Company"). In the early 1980s the songwriting was split more evenly, but May still wrote at least two songs on each album, among them tracks such as “Save Me”, “Flash”, “Hammer to Fall” and “Who Wants to Live Forever”. On The Miracle and Innuendo, the last two albums released in Mercury’s lifetime, all of the songs were credited to the group as a whole, as were several songs on the group’s last album featuring Mercury, Made in Heaven. Nevertheless many of these songs were largely or entirely written by one member of the band, including several, such as the hits “I Want It All” and “Headlong”, which were written by May. May also wrote the last new Queen song on which John Deacon played, a tribute to Mercury called “No-One But You (Only the Good Die Young)”, several songs on a collaboration between May, Taylor and vocalist Paul Rodgers, and the majority of the tracks on his two solo albums, Back to the Light and Another World. At the beginning of his career, he wrote several original songs that were performed by Smile, one of which was later recorded by Queen as a non-album B-side, and co-wrote several more with Tim Staffell (one of these, retitled "Doing All Right", appeared on Queen's debut album). There was also one original song on his first solo venture, an EP called Star Fleet Project, one of the other two songs being a cover of the theme song from a Japanese cartoon (the eponymous Star Fleet) and the third a lengthy jam with the other musicians involved, including Eddie Van Halen. May has also released a soundtrack album and a live album. Oddly enough, despite writing more songs for Queen than anyone else in the band except Freddie Mercury, fewer of his songs reached the top 10 in the UK, the only one officially attributed to him to do so being "Flash" (aka "Flash's Theme), though "I Want It All", written entirely by May but officially credited to Queen, was a number 3 hit (in the UK, "We Will Rock You" was technically considered a B-side to "We Are the Champions", so it did not hit the charts). This may be because May's songs were less pop than some of those the others wrote. However, many of his songs have been among those with the greatest staying power, particularly "We Will Rock You", which may actually be the most widely-known Queen song of all, at least in some parts of the world.

Since May has written too many songs for me to list them all here, I have instead picked some of the best and most widely known of his compositions. As usual, this list is not exhaustive. There are many good songs that I didn’t include, and there are some songs that I didn’t even consider because I’ve never heard them (e.g., the songs on Another World) or because May was not the sole writer of the song (e.g., “One Vision”, “The Show Must Go On”, “Too Much Love Will Kill You”, the solo track "Resurrection", and “Mother Love”). May was the chief writer of “The Show Must Go On”, for instance, but Deacon and Taylor wrote the main chord sequence and Mercury decided on the song’s theme with May and helped write the first verse, so May can’t be given all the credit – otherwise I’d have included it, as it is one of the best latter day Queen songs.

The Best of Brian May
(All songs performed by Queen except where otherwise noted)
Keep Yourself Alive (Lead vocals on bridge by May and Taylor)
Procession
White Queen (As It Began)
Brighton Rock
Now I’m Here
Dear Friends
’39 (Lead vocals by May)
The Prophet’s Song
Good Company (Lead vocals by May)
Tie Your Mother Down
Long Away (Lead vocals by May)
Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)
We Will Rock You
It’s Late
Fat Bottomed Girls
Dead on Time
Dragon Attack
Save Me
Put Out the Fire
Las Palabras de Amor
Hammer to Fall
Who Wants to Live Forever (Lead vocals on first verse and part of bridge by May)
I Want It All (Lead vocals on bridge mostly by May)
Headlong
No-One But You (Only the Good Die Young) (Lead vocals by May and Taylor)
Back to the Light (Brian May solo track; vocals by May)
We Believe (Queen+Paul Rodgers)

Honorable Mentions: The Night Comes Down, Some Day One Day (Lead vocals by May), Sweet Lady, White Man, All Dead All Dead (Lead vocals by May), Leaving Home Ain't Easy (Lead vocals by May), Sail Away Sweet Sister (Lead vocals mostly by May), Flash’s Theme (Lead vocals on several lines by May), The Dark (Brian May solo track), Love Token (Brian May solo track; vocals by May), Just One Life (Brian May solo track; vocals by May), Still Burnin’ (Queen+Paul Rodgers), Some Things That Glitter (Queen+Paul Rodgers)

Ringo Starr Turns 72

Having done a birthday article on Paul McCartney last month, it’s only fair that I do one for his fellow surviving ex-Beatle, Ringo Starr, who was born as Richard Starkey 72 years ago on July 7, 1940. Ringo is held by many in less regard than the other Beatles, to the point where some seem to believe that he had little real talent and that if the Beatles had had another drummer they would have been just as successful. It is unquestionably true that Ringo didn’t have anywhere near the songwriting talent of John Lennon or Paul McCartney, or for that matter George Harrison, and as the Beatles’ reputation is founded in large part on their songs, in this sense he was less important. But it can be argued that he played a vital role in the band’s overall chemistry, and many critics and fellow musicians have said that his drumming skills are underrated.

I don’t feel qualified to judge Ringo’s drumming, but if excellent drummers like Phil Collins (who called the drum fills on “A Day in the Life” “very complex”) praise what he did with the Beatles, than it can’t be all that bad. It certainly works well with the songs, and his drumming on tracks like “Rain”, one that is often cited as having some of his best playing, sounds pretty good to me. He wasn’t a flashy drummer, but then the Beatles’ songs didn’t really call for flash. He did what the songs required, which is what counts, and he was clearly a better drummer than Pete Best, the group’s original drummer (even if the way the other Beatles went about firing Best was rather low). Of course as the drummer for the Beatles he influenced many drummers who came after him. His importance to the band’s chemistry was even more obvious. So while Ringo might not have been the band’s most talented member, he was far from dispensable. John Lennon even asserted that Ringo’s talent was such that he “would have surfaced with or without the Beatles.”

Ringo’s vocal skills were fairly limited, but he was effective enough on the songs he was given to sing, which included a few classics like “With a Little Help from My Friends” and “Yellow Submarine.” He only wrote two songs that were released by the Beatles, “Don’t Pass Me By” from The Beatles (1968) and (with a little uncredited help from George Harrison) “Octopus’s Garden” from Abbey Road (1969), which might not be considered classics but are still pretty good songs. He first received a composing credit for helping on the lyrics to “What Goes On” from Rubber Soul (1965). In earlier years, he generally sang covers, such as “Act Naturally” from Help (1965).

As a solo artist, Ringo had more difficulty sustaining a steady career, which was not surprising since his songwriting skills are limited and his singing, while pleasant, is unexceptional. He did release several very good singles in the immediate aftermath of the Beatles’ split, the first being “It Don’t Come Easy” (credited to Ringo alone, though George almost certainly helped – there’s even a bootleg version with George on lead vocals), which was one of Ringo’s best songs and was backed by the highly entertaining “Early 1970”, a humorous tune written by Ringo about his fellow Beatles and himself. The second single was “Back Off Boogaloo”, another rare solo Ringo composition, and almost as good as “It Don’t Come Easy”. He followed these with his one excellent solo album, 1973’s Ringo, which might well deserve a place among the top 10 solo Beatles albums (in fact if it weren’t for extra competition from Paul’s post-Anthology solo albums, its position in the top 10 would be guaranteed). That album also was unique in that it was the only post-breakup album to feature all four of the Beatles, and one song that had three of them, “I’m the Greatest”, on which Ringo was joined by John (the writer of the song) and George. It also included one of the best solo Beatles songs, “Photograph”, written by George and Ringo. This one is a real classic; I’d place it alongside “With a Little Help from My Friends” as one of the very best songs Ringo sang lead vocals on. There were a number of other standout tracks on the album, such as the abovementioned “I’m the Greatest”, a cover of Randy Newman’s excellent “Have You Seen My Baby”, George and former Beatles roadie Mal Evans’ “You And Me (Babe)”, Ringo and Vince Poncia’s “Oh My My” and “Devil Woman”, George’s “Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)”, Paul’s “Six O’Clock”, Ringo’s own “Step Lightly”, and the album’s other number 1 hit (along with “Photograph”), the oldies cover “You're Sixteen”.

But after Ringo, things went downhill. Its follow-up Goodnight Vienna was not bad, and included a few good songs such as the title track (written by Lennon), “Snookeroo”(by Elton John and Bernie Taupin) and the novelty “No No Song”. But it was not as consistent as Ringo, and the albums after that were even weaker, usually only having a one or two decent songs at best. His career petered out in the early 1980s, though it revived in the 1990s, and several of his albums since then have gotten decent reviews. I haven’t heard any of them in their entirety so I can’t say how they compare with his 1970s ones, but the few songs I’ve heard have been pretty good – one standout track that comes to mind is “Never Without You”, his George Harrison tribute from 2003’s Ringo Rama. Ringo, like Paul, the only other surviving Beatle, remains active today, and while his recent releases may not be as consequential as Paul’s, they are by most accounts enjoyable enough. In any event, Ringo can certainly take pride in the important role he played in the Beatles.

I have made a list of 25 of the best songs with Ringo on lead vocals, both with the Beatles and as a solo artist. Obviously there are other songs that could go on such a list (as I mention above, I haven’t even heard most of the songs from his later albums), but this covers most of the really great ones.

The Best of Ringo Starr
Matchbox (Perkins/Jefferson)
Act Naturally (Owens)
What Goes On (Lennon/McCartney/Starkey)
Yellow Submarine (McCartney/Lennon)
With a Little Help from My Friends (McCartney/Lennon)
Don’t Pass Me By (Starkey)
Octopus’s Garden (Starkey/Harrison)
It Don’t Come Easy (Starkey/Harrison)
Early 1970 (Starkey)
Back Off Boogaloo (Starkey)
Photograph (Starkey/Harrison)
I'm The Greatest (Lennon)
Have You Seen My Baby (Newman)
You're Sixteen (Sherman/Sherman)
Oh My My (Poncia/Starkey)
You and Me (Babe) (Harrison/Evans)
(It's All Down To) Goodnight Vienna (Lennon)
Snookeroo (John/Taupin)
No No Song (Axton/Jackson)
Wrack My Brain (Harrison)
Private Property (McCartney)
Weight of the World (O'Doherty/Velez)
After All These Years (Starkey/Warman)
Never Without You (Starkey/Hudson/Nicholson)
Fading In Fading Out (Starkey/Hudson/Burr)

Honorable Mentions: Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond) (Harrison), Devil Woman (Poncia/Starkey), Six O’Clock (McCartney), Cookin' (In the Kitchen of Love) (Lennon), A Dose of Rock 'n' Roll (Groszmann), Give Me Back The Beat (Starkey/Hudson/Burr/Dudas/Grakal)

Note: Aside from those in the list above, the only other songs that I know of which Ringo received sole credit for writing were "Down and Out" (Starkey), “Step Lightly” (Starkey), and “Call Me” (Starkey).

Paul McCartney Turns 70

Seventy years ago, on June 18, 1942, James Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool, England. When he was fifteen, he joined the Quarrymen, a band led by John Lennon, which later evolved into the Beatles. With John, he was part of one of the world’s most famous and successful songwriting partnerships in history (though many of the songs credited to “Lennon-McCartney” were actually written by one of them alone), and when his solo efforts are added to his work with the Beatles, he is without question one of the most successful popular musicians in history; Guinness World Records described him as the "most successful composer and recording artist of all time." He has received numerous accolades, including a knighthood in his native UK and more recently the Gershwin Prize, presented by US President Barack Obama in a White House ceremony.


Paul McCartney is a brilliant composer with an almost unequalled gift for melody. He has written music in a wide variety of forms and genres, including ballads, rock, music hall/vaudeville, children’s music, electronic music and classical. His best known compositions include “I Saw Her Standing There”, “Can’t Buy Me Love”, “And I Love Her”, “Yesterday”, “Michelle”, “Paperback Writer”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “Here, There and Everywhere”, “Yellow Submarine”, “For No One”, “Penny Lane”, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, “Hey Jude”, “Back in the USSR”, “Blackbird”, “Helter Skelter”, “Get Back”, “Let It Be”, “The Long and Winding Road”, “Maybe I’m Amazed”, “Live and Let Die”, “Band on the Run”, “Jet”, “Listen to What the Man Said”, “Mull of Kintyre” (with Denny Laine), “Ebony and Ivory” and many more, not to mention his numerous collaborations with John Lennon. He also had a great gift for arranging, coming up with many inventive touches to improve songs he recorded with the Beatles and afterwards. His primary instrument with the Beatles was the bass, and he is widely regarded as the one of the most influential bass players ever. He is also a talented guitar player, performing solo acoustic guitar numbers like “Yesterday” and “Blackbird” and occasionally playing lead guitar as well. He was the most proficient keyboard player in the band, and played piano and organ on numerous songs. He also played drums on several Beatles songs, such as “Back in the USSR” and “The Ballad of John and Yoko”. On several of his solo albums such as McCartney and Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, he played all the instruments. As far Paul's contributions to the Beatles go, it's worth noting that other than performing, arranging, and writing songs, Paul came up with several key ideas on how to put their albums together, most notably the concept behind Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the medley on the second side of Abbey Road. Going further back, since Paul was the first to start writing songs, he inspired John to start doing so as well, and so in a sense he had a role in all that John wrote.

Despite the high regard in which he is generally held, there is still a tendency in some quarters to denigrate McCartney and his accomplishments in favor of his former bandmate and songwriting partner John Lennon. While no one can legitimately claim to be a Beatles fan without liking at least a considerable amount of Paul’s enormous contributions to the group, it is John who gets idolized and who is often seen as the heart and soul of the band. While there is no question that John was a genius and the Beatles wouldn’t have been the greatest popular music group in history without him, Paul was every bit as important to the group and deserves just as much credit for everything that made the Beatles great. While John was the founder of the group and its public leader in the early years, Paul was in many ways the band’s musical leader, due to his attention to detail and his acute musical sensibility, and he took a more prominent leadership role in the band’s later years, when John started to lose interest. If it weren’t for Paul pushing the others, great albums like Abbey Road would never have been made. In fact, long-time Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick, in talking about John and Paul's different leadership roles, apparently said that he had always seen Paul as the true leader of the group, at least when it came to music.

The usual stereotype is that Paul wrote melodic ballads and John wrote edgy rock and roll. It is true that Paul wrote a lot more ballads than John, and that John wrote more of the harder songs. But as John himself once pointed out, this stereotype was exaggerated. Paul wrote songs like “Yesterday”, “Michelle”, “Here, There and Everywhere”, “Hey Jude” and “Let It Be”, but he also wrote “I’m Down”, “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road”, “Helter Skelter”, “Get Back” and “Oh Darling”. Also, while John did write more of the most obviously experimental tracks, Paul often played a major role in their recording. For instance, on John’s “Tomorrow Never Knows”, it was Paul who took the lead in putting together the tape loops used on the song. His Mellotron intro to “Strawberry Fields Forever” is a key part of the song. On “A Day in the Life”, aside from writing the middle section of the song, it was Paul’s idea to use an orchestra to bridge the gap between John’s parts and his, and to have it “go crazy”. So even when the song was John’s, Paul often had a lot to do with making it sound the way it did.

In fact, John once complained that he thought Paul sometimes would subconsciously try to sabotage his songs. As he put it, the group would “spend hours doing little detailed cleaning-ups of Paul’s songs; when it came to mine…this atmosphere of looseness and casualness and experimentation would creep in.” Aside from the ironic fact that John now often gets a lot of praise from the “experimentation” he complained about, this statement says less about any real effort by Paul to sabotage John’s work than it does about their wildly different approaches to recording their songs. As George Martin once explained, when John brought in a song, he would usually just give some vague idea about the sort of sound he wanted. Paul, on the other hand, often had very precise ideas about what he wanted every instrument to play (in this respect he was much like Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys leader who was in many ways Paul’s musical twin – Wilson was born two days after McCartney, he also played bass and keyboards, and he had a similar talent for composing and arranging). For instance, not only did Paul decide he wanted a piccolo trumpet on “Penny Lane”, he came up with the notes it would play, with Martin simply transcribing them. This meticulous approach sometimes led to conflict, as he often would dictate to George Harrison and Ringo Starr exactly what he wanted them to play, which they occasionally resented. But while he may have occasionally been lacking in tact in doing his arrangements, it’s hard to argue with results, and in his case they were often impressive indeed.

One example of the sometimes negative attitude some people take towards Paul is the criticism he received (spearheaded by Yoko Ono, but parroted by a number of critics and fans) for reversing the credits on his Back in the US live album, listing them as being written by “Paul McCartney and John Lennon” rather than the usual “Lennon and McCartney”. But the songs in question were all songs that Paul was the primary or sole writer of, so it was perfectly logical to put his name first – in fact, on songs like “Yesterday”, John’s name really shouldn’t be there at all, as he had nothing to do with it (as he was the first to acknowledge). And as Paul pointed out, not only had he reversed the credits for Beatles songs of his that were included on 1976’s Wings Over America without John (or Yoko) making any complaint, a few of the Beatles’ early songs also had “McCartney-Lennon” credits. Frankly, no one with any rational sense should have joined Yoko in criticizing Paul for taking primary credit for his own songs, but thanks in part to the fact that he was murdered, John is viewed as a martyr and almost a god, while Paul, despite all his obvious achievements, is stuck in his shadow (see also this article on the credit flap).

I should point out again that in emphasizing Paul’s contributions, it is not my intention to belittle John’s equally great work. My main point is just that Paul was just as much of a genius as John was, and so deserves equal respect. I know I’m not the only one to feel this way. I recall reading a comment from Peter Gabriel that he was reluctant to participate in a recording (or perhaps it was a concert) in tribute to John Lennon, not because he didn’t love Lennon’s music – he once covered “Strawberry Fields Forever” – but because he felt there was a tendency to praise John to the detriment of Paul, and he disagreed with that (unfortunately I can’t remember where I saw this comment, so I can’t provide a proper citation to back up my memory of it). For that matter, there is really no reason for fans to choose one over the other – there’s no reason not to like both equally. Also, despite the tendency of many to think that John and Paul hated each other after the Beatles broke up, in fact despite some nasty comments (from John particularly) in the media in the early 1970s, their relationship was actually fairly amicable, if sometimes distant, for the rest of John’s life, and they even hung out together a number of times in the middle of the decade (I’ve come to the conclusion that many people actually prefer to see conflicts between former bandmates, so they imagine them even when they don’t exist). Paul and John were sometimes rivals, but they were usually friendly ones, and there is no need to debate unanswerable questions like which one was greater than the other.

Paul’s one obvious weakness as a songwriter is his lyrics. He wrote a lot of very good lyrics, both with the Beatles and afterwards, but he has always been erratic as a lyricist, as some of his lyrics are awkward or just plain awful. This weakness was a little less obvious with the Beatles, as John would tell him when he thought his lyrics were crap, and often either he or Paul himself would come up with something better. But occasionally some poor lines got through, and once Paul went solo, there was no one to tell him when his lyrics needed serious rewriting. Unfortunately, in quite a few cases during his career a bad set of lyrics has ruined an otherwise good song. But in most cases Paul’s gift for melody can make up for mediocre lyrics, and when he does write a good lyric, the result is usually a great song.

Below I have listed 50 of Paul’s best songs with the Beatles (actually this is most of them, and even the few I left out are pretty good). While John helped a little on some of these, all of them were primarily (and in many cases entirely) by Paul. I didn’t include songs that the two are generally believed to have made equal contributions to, such as “She Loves You”, or even those where Paul was the main writer but John’s contribution was fairly substantial, like “We Can Work It Out” and “Getting Better”. I did include “Eleanor Rigby” despite John’s claim to have written much of the lyrics, as several other accounts say he contributed little, and I also included “With a Little Help From My Friends”, despite some sources crediting equal to John and Paul, as John was quoted on several occasions as saying it was mostly Paul’s song. I considered highlighting 20 or 25 of my particular favorites among these songs, but while there are some that I would definitely put in any such list, it was still too hard to narrow it down; perhaps next year I'll make another attempt. Here is a list by someone else. Needless to say, my list would be somewhat different, but I can appreciate his introductory statement that his own list would be different each time he did it; the same is true for me, which is why I am reluctant to put one in writing, as if it represented my definitive choices.

In addition, I have listed several of Paul’s best solo albums (I treated Wings albums as solo albums). Though what I have written above is focused on Paul’s work with the Beatles, this does not mean I agree with those who dismiss his solo career. On the contrary, I think Paul wrote a lot of great stuff after the Beatles broke up, including some songs that are comparable to the best of his songs with the Beatles. It is true that he was rather inconsistent, as most of his solo albums had songs that were obvious filler or were even downright bad. But by the same token, all of his albums had at least a few good songs, and most had a few great ones. In fact, if you compare his solo work with that of the other Beatles, not only did he have far more good songs in total, which might be expected considering that he was far more prolific and is still alive and releasing music, but his ratio of good songs to mediocre ones was comparable to John’s, probably a little better than George’s and much better than Ringo’s. If I had the time, I could easily come up with a list of Paul’s best solo songs that would be as lengthy as that of his best Beatles work, but it would take me quite a bit of time to choose from among the many good songs on his last half dozen or so solo albums (all of his albums since Flaming Pie have been pretty good). Of his solo songs from the seventies and eighties, there are also a lot of great ones, but among those that deserve special mention are “Maybe I’m Amazed”, “Every Night”, “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”, “Too Many People”, “Live and Let Die”, “Helen Wheels”, “Band on the Run”, “Jet”, “Venus and Mars/Rockshow”, “Listen to What the Man Said”, “Mull of Kintyre” (co-written by Denny Laine), “Tug of War”, “Wanderlust”, “My Brave Face” (co-written by Declan MacManus [Elvis Costello]) and “This One”. For a few samples of his later albums (all worth hearing in their entirety), check out "Beautiful Night", "Run Devil Run", "Riding Into Jaipur", "Fine Line", "Ever Present Past", "Sing the Changes" and "My Valentine"

Paul McCartney with the Beatles
I Saw Her Standing There
All My Loving
Can’t Buy Me Love
And I Love Her
I'll Follow the Sun
I’m Down
The Night Before
I’ve Just Seen a Face
Yesterday
Drive My Car
You Won’t See Me
Michelle
I'm Looking Through You
Paperback Writer
Eleanor Rigby
Here, There and Everywhere
Yellow Submarine
Good Day Sunshine
For No One
Got to Get You into My Life
Penny Lane
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
With a Little Help from My Friends
Fixing a Hole
She’s Leaving Home
When I’m 64
Lovely Rita
Magical Mystery Tour
Fool on the Hill
Hello Goodbye
Lady Madonna
Hey Jude
Back in the USSR
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Blackbird
Why Don’t We Do It in the Road
Martha My Dear
I Will
Mother Nature's Son
Helter Skelter
Honey Pie
Get Back
Let It Be
The Long and Winding Road
Oh Darling
You Never Give Me Your Money
She Came In Through the Bathroom Window
Golden Slumbers
Carry That Weight
The End

Honorable Mentions: Love Me Do, Things We Said Today, Eight Days a Week, Another Girl, Tell Me What You See, Rocky Raccoon, Birthday, Two of Us, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer

Paul McCartney’s Best Post-Beatles Studio Albums
McCartney
Ram
Band on the Run
Venus and Mars
Tug of War
Flowers in the Dirt
Flaming Pie
Run Devil Run
Chaos and Creation in the Backyard
Electric Arguments

Honorable Mentions: Red Rose Speedway, London Town, Driving Rain, Memory Almost Full

Album Review – Synchronicity by The Police

Album Title: Synchronicity
Artist: The Police
Release Date: June 1, 1983

Synchronicity I (Sting)
Walking in Your Footsteps (Sting)
O My God (Sting)
Mother (Andy Summers)
Miss Gradenko (Stewart Copeland)
Synchronicity II (Sting)
Every Breath You Take (Sting)
King of Pain (Sting)
Wrapped Around Your Finger (Sting)
Tea in the Sahara (Sting)
Murder by Numbers (Words: Sting, Music: Andy Summers)

The Police released five albums in their brief career, all of them solid efforts overall. Arguably the best of them is the last one, Synchronicity, though some might pick Zenyatta Mondatta (perhaps their most consistent album, without any really weak tracks) or Ghost in the Machine (which has several of their best songs). Synchronicity, which was released 29 years ago this month, was certainly the band’s most commercial successful work; it also contained many of their very best tracks. The Police had diversified their sound on Ghost in the Machine, and this welcome development continued on Synchronicity, which has the greatest variety of material on any of their albums. Sting wrote some of the best songs of his career for this album, and while Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland didn’t contribute a great deal in terms of songwriting, their playing is excellent, and their contributions to the arrangement of the songs were also important. Producer Hugh Padgham likewise played a key role in holding everything together, especially given the conflicts in the band. While a few of the tracks on the album are fairly weak, the others – particularly those on the second half of the album – more than make up for them, resulting in probably the best original Police album you can buy (though for a single disc of Police songs, I’d recommend one of the better compilation albums).

Synchronicity Song by Song

Synchronicity I: The album gets off to a strong start with this song, which musically is a upbeat, driving tune based around a synthesizer line that repeats throughout the song. Lyrically it was inspired by Carl Jung and Arthur Koestler’s writings on the philosophical concept of synchronicity.

Walking in Your Footsteps: Musically this is another solid offering, and I like the lyrical concept, which compares the reign of the dinosaurs as the dominant animals on Earth to that of humans in the present time. I don’t think the concept is executed as well as it could have been, as some of the actual lyrics seem a bit weak.

O My God: This jazzy tune references several of Sting’s earlier compositions, such as “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”, as well as the Biblical exhortation to “turn the other cheek”. Like the one before it, it isn’t a great song, but it’s enjoyable enough.

Mother: This song evokes a decidedly mixed reaction from listeners, with many considering it the worst song on the album (All Music Guide calls it “almost unlistenable”). The song certainly shows that Andy Summers was no threat to Sting’s position as the band’s chief songwriter and lead vocalist. Still, its quirkiness is kind of fascinating, so I don’t mind it so much.

Miss Gradenko: Stewart Copeland’s one song on the album is lyrically and melodically much better than “Mother”, though the lyrics are a tad repetitive. Another okay song, though again it is obvious why Sting ended up doing most of the writing (Copeland’s song on Ghost in the Machine, “Darkness”, is better than this one).

Synchronicity II: If you were just going by the first half of the album, Synchronicity wouldn’t seem to be anything special, but that changes with this track. This is one of my favorite Police songs, with great, driving music and excellent lyrics. This song has some of the best lines Sting ever wrote, and the band turns in a great performance.

Every Breath You Take: This, of course, is Sting’s best known composition and the Police’s best known song. It has a great melody and an excellent arrangement (for which Andy Summers deserves a substantial share of the credit). Thought of as romantic by some people who obviously weren’t listening closely, it’s actually sung from the viewpoint of an obsessed stalker. It’s another of my favorite Police songs, though it would have to compete for the top spot with a number of others, like “Message in a Bottle”, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”, “Synchronicity II” and “King of Pain”.

King of Pain: This is another of my favorite Police songs. I’ve always loved the dynamic leap (if that’s correct term) in the song, and the series of images in the lyrics is also great. Like a lot of Police songs, it’s fairly simple musically, but there is a lot of power in its simplicity.

Wrapped Around Your Finger: This is yet another great song, and probably the only hit pop song ever to mention the mythological monsters Scylla and Charybdis in the lyrics. Of course this is the sort of thing that makes some people call Sting pretentious, but I don’t see any reason pop songs should always be dumbed down to an elementary school level (or lower).

Tea in the Sahara: This is another song with a literary inspiration. It may not be quite the equal of the songs before it, but it is still a very good song. Sting has revisited it frequently, performing it on his first solo tour and also with jazz legend Gil Evans.

Murder by Numbers: This song was not on the original LP release, but was on the cassette and CD versions. It features music by Andy Summers (considerably more straightforward than “Mother”, needless to say) and lyrics by Sting. The lyrics in particular stand out, using a humorous approach to make a semi-serious comparison between serial killers and national leaders. It’s no “Every Breath You Take” or “Synchronicity II”, but it’s a good ending to a great album.

Bob Dylan

Today is the 71st birthday of the man born Robert Allen Zimmerman, but now universally known as Bob Dylan. While I don't listen to Dylan as much as I do a number of other artists, there is no question that he was the most important artist of the 1960s after the Beatles and possibly Jimi Hendrix, and he has had a tremendous influence on popular music.

I have around a half dozen Dylan albums, including most of those that are generally regarded as his best. These include his breakthrough second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (featuring "Blowin' in the Wind"); the half acoustic, half electric Bringing It All Back Home; the classic Highway 61 Revisited (featuring "Like a Rolling Stone"); the double album Blonde on Blonde; and his mid 1970s masterpiece Blood on the Tracks. I also have several of his recent albums, including Time Out of Mind, "Love and Theft" and Modern Times, plus two Best of Bob Dylan CDs. While these CDs make up only a small portion of his total output, they do contain a large share of what most people consider his best work, and I like all of them, particularly the ones from the 1960s.

I don't want to attempt a comprehensive listing of my favorite Dylan songs, but a number of standout tracks come to mind. From The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, there's "Blowin' in the Wind", "Masters of War" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall". "The Times They Are a-Changin'" is another of my favorites from his folk/protest period. From his 1965-66 peak, I love "Subterranean Homesick Blues", "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)","Positively 4th Street", "Like a Rolling Stone", "Highway 61 Revisited", "Desolation Row" and "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat". Another favorite of mine is "Tangled Up in Blue" from Blood on the Tracks. I also like "All Along the Watchtower" (though of course the Hendrix version is as good or even better than Dylan's), "Forever Young", "Shelter From The Storm" (also from Blood on the Tracks), "Jokerman", and even the "born-again" track "Gotta Serve Somebody". Of course there are a lot of other great songs I haven't mentioned here, but a CD of these songs would certainly be a great introduction to Dylan for those few who are unfamiliar with him.

Of course Dylan's songs have been widely covered by other artists, and I once made a few compilations of various Dylan covers, including some of the most famous ones. Perhaps next year when Dylan's birthday rolls around again I'll do a post on them. But thinking of Dylan covers does recall the issue of his voice. There is no question that Dylan's voice is not exactly the most pleasant around, but as with Randy Newman, he still is often the best interpreter of his own material. Still, it's occasionally nice to hear his songs done by singers with greater range than him.

A year ago, I saw Dylan when he came to Taiwan to perform. It was an entertaining show, even given that our seats were practically the worst in the place (we were up at the very top of the arena, with our backs literally to the wall). Dylan's voice, it has to be said, has definitely deteriorated, though he was able to sing all the way through the concert. He also rearranged some of his classic songs drastically, such that, when sung in his barely intelligible voice, it took me a few verses to recognize them. Fortunately, I'd spent some time listening to his more recent material as well (which also includes some really good songs, though I didn't mention any examples above), so I was familiar with a lot of what he performed. In any case, it was a worthwhile experience, if only because one doesn't get a lot of opportunities to hear an artist of Dylan's stature play live when you live in Taiwan. Now if only Paul McCartney would come here on tour....