Paul McCartney and Wings: Silly Love Songs
I didn’t want to do this, but somebody whose opinion matters a lot has lobbied me to include this on the all-time shit list.
I resisted, I did. I tried to explain how it wasn’t fair, both because nobody else was getting two nut shots, and because I regard McCartney’s songwriting prowess as unsurpassed in all of history, despite a spate of Seventies boners. Nobody I don’t know personally, I pleaded, has ever done as much to improve the quality of my life. Take anybody’s single best song, I argued, and McCartney probably has a hundred that are just as good. He might be the greatest melodist who ever lived! Tchaikovsky and Schubert have nothing on this guy when it comes to sublime, unforgettable melody! I pleaded.
Yeah, but it’s hard to disregard the view of somebody who matters so much, and not just because he’s one of maybe three people max who’ve ever read this shitty blog, so OK, here’s Silly Love Songs, and of course it’s not very good, is it? Of course it isn’t. Now, I don’t agree, not one little bit, that it’s actually worse than Ebony and Ivory, or Say, Say Say, for that matter – remember that awful collaboration with Michael Jackson? – and I’d note that first, Silly Love Songs was obviously meant to be a tongue-in-cheek riposte to his critics, that second, it contains some deft musical twists, and third, that it is, as ever, a clinic in melodic bass playing, but anyway, yes, on balance it’s no good. So fine, then, let’s give Paul another nut shot.
Five hundred years from now, any child on Earth will be able to hum you the melody of Yesterday or Hey Jude or Let it Be or Eleanor Rigby, or about two hundred more I could list, but fine, yes, inarguably, this one was a boner.
The admitting of which has caused me to reassess my “nobody gets more than one nut shot” policy. Thus:
Guns ‘N Roses: Sweet Child o’ Mine
The musical equivalent of root canal without anesthesia, as Axl makes a sound akin to a chainsaw cutting through a steel I-beam, this isn’t even the worst thing these screeching dickhead Rolling Stones wannabes ever perpetrated. It’s absolutely gawd-awful, but not even within artillery range of their worst. Neither is this:
Guns ‘N Roses: Welcome to the Jungle
You’re gettin’ warmer doc! Oh, you’re red hot! One listen to this shrill, bullshitty, hairy-assed, empty-headed, screaming simulation of Aerosmith on a bender, a drunken Rolling Stones wannabe’s imitation of a stoned Rolling Stones wannabe, and you might reasonably rest assured that finally, you’d heard the most disgustingly repellant piece of shit that anybody ever took seriously. The thoroughly talentless fuckwit and supposed axe-man in the stovepipe hat is almost enough to seal the deal, and then there’s the Queen-mixed-with-jazz-fusion transition that occurs at 3:28, juxtaposed against images of our boy Axl in a Clockwork Orange-inspired get-up, and if by then you aren’t asking the waiter to bring you a big silver bucket in which to up-chuck most violently, you don’t need a lobotomy – you’ve got nothin’ to lobotomize. Yet even this isn’t the nadir. No, no, it gets even worse:
Guns ‘N Roses: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
As near as I can tell, and as much as it strains credulity, Bob Dylan never paid for a hit on these assholes, or even launched a lawsuit, despite this vile desecration of one of his better songs. It’s almost impossible to maintain one’s sanity after hearing arch-idiot Axl enunciate his parrot-like way through nawwwk nawwwk nawwwkin on he-vehn’s dawwwwwwerorrerrrrr. Awk!! Pieces of eight!! If that was my song I’d have killed this mo’fucker with a sharpened spoon long ago. Yet even this is a masterwork next to:
Guns ‘N Roses: Patience
These fuckin’ guys just couldn’t stop going for their own Wild Horses/Can’t Always Get What You Want/Angie combo, and they didn’t care how many individual provisions of the Geneva Conventions they had to violate in pursuit of their twisted dreams. By now it should come as no surprise to the hypothetical reader that nobody was ever prosecuted for this one, despite what literally millions of innocent men, women and children were made to suffer from often inadvertent exposure to the immortal song stylings of this empty-headed doorknob in the backwards-facing baseball cap.
Look, I’m not saying that citizens should have taken to the streets with torches and pitchforks, and hunted these miserable bastards to extinction. I think the Navy Seals should have taken care of them.
Here you go. A parting snapshot. Axl sings another assuredly great song, as these things are reckoned by the morons who govern pop culture, wearing a T-shirt that pays tribute to one of his musical heroes:
Well, there it is. This is all you need to know about this bunch. Guns ‘N Roses is the music of guys who watch Fox News, love the WWE, vote Trump, and run around the woods with their ARs pretending to be latter-day recruits to the einsatzgruppen. And to think that I once ranted that Drake was awful. With this, beloved artiste Axl finally sank to his natural level by slathering himself in the stink of a psychotic white supremacist serial killer, also, apparently, a kindred spirit, and thus, one can only hope, secured himself a final resting place in the bowels of Satan’s most horrifying hall of mind-roasting torments.
Only if there’s any justice, though. And you know friggin’ well there isn’t, else how did Guns ‘N Roses ever happen in the first place?
the needlefish 