The Beatles' Solo Careers Poll - Voting and General Discussion Thread

Oh yeah, cosign on that

"secret friend" is so good, the b-side of 'temporary secretary' (which i've never been able to get into). 'one of these days' , also from the mccartney II sessions, reminds me a bit of simon and garfunkel. they'll both be high up on my ballot, i think.

"Temporary Secretary" would've been a menace if it had been a bigger hit. I only had to endure it at indie disco bars in the early '00s.

I like "Somedays" off Flaming Pie, the first of several times where McCartney has addressed in song some of the negative aspects of fame and wealth: "Don't ask me where I found that picture on the wall/How much it cost or what it's worth."

Cool Baroque oboe part

I don’t think I’ve heard 85% of all of these

Temporary Secretary is so irritating. Dude you just made Check My Machine, but that doesn't make the album?

each anti-"temporary secretary" post just bumps it up a slot on my ballot

Five tracks from George Harrison possibly? I've got "Blow Away," "Love Comes to Everyone," "Faster," "If You Believe," and "Soft Touch."

We haven't accounted yet for the songs included on the musical discs that accompanied these books:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_by_George_Harrison
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_by_George_Harrison_2

And start up the cement mixer, I'm probably going with every song on Side One of Gone Troppo.

okay so here are some less-heralded McCartney songs I am irredeemably fond of, and might conceivably vote for, in chronological order. 100 tracks gives one some room for some of the detours, odd genre experiments, four-track inside jokes, and inexplicable stoner fantasies that make his bloated discography so charming for die-hards, and so irritating for those who wish he would just take the extra week's work to write less stupid lyrics to his best melodies.

i'm assuming that everyone knows mccartney, ram, band on the run, mccartney ii, tug of war, flowers in the dirt, and his numerous smash hit singles. if not, those should really be the focus of any catchup ballot-listening, with ram and band on the run at the head. this is for people who just can't muster sifting through the rest of that massive discography. would love to see other people's faves!

Mumbo all i really need from Wild Life and an encapsulation of why that album completely flopped and was hated - sloppy, pointless, basically lyric-less warmup exercises with a not particularly tight band. it's great!

Big Barn Bed; Getting Closer the "Mumbos" of Red Rose Speedway and Back to the Egg, respectively. the bands are tighter, letting the idiosyncratic, weird, totally hollow and totally appealing lyrics glide right in on enthusiastic deliveries. "SAY YOU DON'T LOVE HIM - - My salamander!" may be the best opening line to any solo McCartney album.

Medley (Hold Me Tight, Lazy Dynamite, Hands Of Love, Power Cut) this album is 42 minutes long and closes with an eleven-minute medley with maybe twenty-five unique lines in the lyrics; a pure exercise in melody and arranging, it's no "Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey" but I just love this guy putting this much energy and enthusiasm into this thing and it still feels like it's arrived somewhere when we get to the endless go-rounds of "Baby I love you so" as the other melodic motifs weave their way back in.

Single Pigeon got love upthread - it's terrific, this one incredibly focused little piano gem, in the same album of sprawling Technicolor nonsense that includes "Big Barn Bed," the medley, and a preposterous instrumental titled "Loup (1st Indian on the Moon)" which I'm surprised Jamiroquai never tried to arrange for the digeridoo.

Magneto & Titanium Man whiz! bang! comics aren't just for kids anymore! It won Geir's poll of Venus & Mars! of the half-dozen or so mccartney songs i got through in my abortive attempt at a double-album of covers, this was the most fun to learn and satisfying to record. "and the CRIM-SON DY-NA-MOooo!"

I've Had Enough and Name and Address late-70s attempts at glam-stomp and Elvis. macca was a man out of time and somehow everything comes through his filter just slightly wrong and weird. Catchy!

Waterspout a sweet little drum machine number from late in the Wings era that still sounds to me like it belongs on McCartney II. The narrative is perhaps thin but something about the warbly sound and the opening line "Daddy loved a dancer" makes it feel more substantial to me, like this is an old man telling the story of how he met his bride or something.

Morse Moose and the Grey Goose maybe the most "Paul McCartney album track" song title ever. all the theatrics and drama of a "Live and Let Die," surrounding what appears to be the story of a deep-sea moose struggling to use Morse code with his hooves. if it was played for wackiness it'd be death on record but McCartney seems completely unaware that this is a stupid idea for a song, and gives it his all. it rules.

Boil Crisis a truly odd attempt at ... post-punk? I think? Most of the versions online have terrible sound but there's a Youtube of the "Unsurpassed Rudeness" bootleg gets it. The kind of bizarre "Famous Groupies" stoner narrative lyrics that got rarer going into the 80s. "One night in the life of a kid named Sid, he was scoring with a broad in a pyramid." If this was a Tall Dwarves or Elephant 6 track or something people would be all over it. See also "Give Us A Chord, Roy."

Arrow Through Me this has gotten a lot of ILM love over the years so just wanted to make sure it got a shout-out here. It gets compared to Steely Dan, which I don't quite hear but I will concede it is surely the yachtiest Beatles song. wish he'd done a whole album like this.

Baby's Request his best ever "old-timey" number? what a tune on this one.

I'll Give You A Ring cheery, bouncy b-side to "Take It Away," and your basic charming trifle, feeling very much like just him and a four-track (though hardly lo-fi); if it were arranged with drum machine and synths it'd be very comfortable on McCartney II but the little touches of "I love pre-rock pop" kind of mark the classicist adult-contemporary turn he was making at this point.

Ode To A Koala Bear b-side to "Say Say Say" and sort of epitomzies Paul's strengths and weaknesses by this point: lovely, singable melody, but the four-track homemade tracks are devolving to just bashing out the chords to hold together a demo before he loses interest and wanders onto something else. there are so many 80s Paul tracks like this. but this also has that spark of weirdness in choosing a koala bear as the central metaphor, deflating (or, if you're less tolerant of all this, spoiling) what could have been a serious ballad of devotion. like, he doesn't sing "i will walk with you to the end of the passage" like this is supposed to be a silly throwaway! it is also easy to hear the refrain as "my little koala nightmare" and i've always liked that.

Pretty Little Head - Best thing on Press to Play besides "Press" and for real his last great "wtf" lyrics. hillsmen! hillsmen!

Put It There beautiful and well-focused father-son fable. if some of these others feel like shapless non-ideas, this (like "baby's request") is a testament to the songcraft he continued to have up his sleeve. avoid the music video, it's a different take/mix and the vocal feels muggy.

Loveliest Thing B-side to "Figure of Eight" that should have closed Flowers in the Dirt (as it did the expanded 1993 CD). except when the louder drums kick in for the chorus, an unforced-feeling would-be piano-bar staple.

Hope of Deliverance okay this was a decent-sized hit but I feel like it's on nobody's radar and it's reeeeeeeeeal fuckin' catchy.

Honey Hush, No Other Baby, and Movie Magg highlights of Run Devil Run, the quickie rock covers album recorded while he was grieving for Linda. boomer throwback albums like this are a dime a dozen but he had a good band and his singing was more focused and motivated than it'd been in years, even on the better Flaming Pie cuts.

this is for people who just can't muster sifting through the rest of that massive discography.

this is mostly me, although i'm doing my best to give each album at least one listen in the next few weeks. i'll give more attention to tracks you highlighted!

A couple on there I'd hesitated on, but you're right for sure on "Big Barn Bed" and I don't know why I wouldn't include "Mumbo." "Morse Moose" I will revisit.

Shout out, though, to "Tomorrow," as my favorite from Wild Life.

oh man

SIDE A SAY SAY SAY
SIDE B ODE TO A KOALA BEAR

is still the funniest thing ever

the "You Really Got A Hold On Me" melody in the first line in particular, it really sounds like he was so stoned he started singing a different song. he doesn't repeat it either iirc

I'm rather glad I picked up vg copies of Wild Life, Ram and The Sound of the Sand (David Thomas, v weirdly) from the same op shop 20 years ago

There's only five songs on Casino's list that I'd consider voting for! Not gonna say which ones...

Big Barn Bed has my vote already!

Well obv Mumbo

(xpost)

'Mumbo' is terrible - there's some underrated stuff on Wild Life, though. 'Bip Bop' is terrible also.

I'm with you on "Hope of Deliverance" -- just a giant arc of a lovely melody. And when a pal and I heard "Arrow Through Me" in early 2007 we thought, "Man, imagine if a hip hop producer sampled it..." Erykah Badu did three years later

Yeah for Wild Life the real keepers are Some People Never Know and Tomorrow.

Agreed about "Hope of Deliverance".
I wonder why it's not on his "Pure McCartney" comilation (not even on the 67 tracks deluxe version !)

Yeah for Wild Life the real keepers are Some People Never Know and Tomorrow.

― ColinO, Wednesday, May 16, 2018 10:46 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup, completely agree!

lol I almost presented it as Mumbo *and* Bip Bop. wish the whole album was more like those. "Hey Diddle" would slot in well with those. Just a whole album of a novice band finding a single hook and a chord progression that feels good and running through it over and over.

Usually Paul had much more of a filter for that kind of thing - like you can tell he knew that "A Love For You" sounded incredible but that as a *song* it was sort of shapeless compared to the other Ram material - could be two minutes, could be eight. With the Wild Life stuff, even more than the ostensibly dgaf home-grown debut, it's like he just lets the tape run and there's the album.

idk how many of my above list *I'll* vote for once I have all the stone-cold classics locked in, but definitely a few...

Yeah for Wild Life the real keepers are Some People Never Know and Tomorrow.

Agreed on both of these, I quite like Love Is Strange as well.

I thought the real keeper off Wild Life was Dear Friend, I'm a sucker for songs Paul and John write about each other tho

I'm with you on "Hope of Deliverance" -- just a giant arc of a lovely melody. And when a pal and I heard "Arrow Through Me" in early 2007 we thought, "Man, imagine if a hip hop producer sampled it..." Erykah Badu did three years later

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn),

i didn't know about the badu connection til now! "arrow through me" came on (listening to Pure McCartney to try to brush up on the hits) and i was deeply confused for a second. "gone baby, don't be long" has been one of my most played songs this year, and i had no idea it sampled wings!

here's a deep Ringo cut someone already voted for

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdjA1UeR-SQ

also just realized I left the tracklistings off of Ringo's albums, will fix shortly

Yay!

RINGO STARR

Solo

Sentimental Journey
Sentimental Journey
Night And Day
Whispering Grass (Don't Tell The Trees)
Bye Bye Blackbird
I'm A Fool To Care
Star Dust
Blue, Turning Grey Over You
Love Is A Many Splendoured Thing
Dream
You Always Hurt The One You Love
Have I Told You Lately That I Love You
Let The Rest Of The World Go By

Beaucoups of Blues
Beaucoups Of Blues
Love Don't Last Long
Fastest Growing Heartache In The West
Without Her
Women Of The Night
I'd Be Talking All The Time
$15 Draw
Wine, Women And Loud Happy Songs
I Wouldn't Have You Any Other Way
Loser's Lounge
Waiting
Silent Homecoming

Ringo
I'm The Greatest
Hold On
Photograph
Sunshine Life For Me (Sail Away Raymond)
You're Sixteen
Oh My My
Step Lightly
Six O'Clock
Devil Woman
You And Me (Babe)

Goodnight Vienna
Goodnight Vienna
Occapella
Oo-Wee
Husbands And Wives
Snookeroo
All By Myself
Call Me
No No Song
Only You (And You Alone)
Easy For Me
Goodnight Vienna (Reprise)

Ringo's Rotogravure
A Dose Of Rock'n Roll
Hey Baby
Pure Gold
Cryin'
You Don't Know Me At All
Cookin' (In The Kitchen Of Love)
I'll Still Love You
This Be Called A Song
Las Brisas
Lady Gaye
Spooky Weirdness

Ringo the 4th
Drowning In The Sea Of Love
Tango All Night
Wings
Gave It All Up
Out On The Streets
Can She Do It Like She Dances
Sneaking Sally Through The Alley
It's No Secret
Gypsies In Flight
Simple Love Song

Bad Boy
Who Needs A Heart
Bad Boy
Lipstrick Traces (On A Cigarette)
Heart On My Sleeve
Where Did Our Love Go
Hard Times
Tonight
Monkey See-Monkey Do
Old Time Relovin'
A Man Like Me

Stop and Smell the Roses
Private Property
Wrack My Brain
Drumming Is My Madness
Attention
Stop And Take The Time To Smell The Roses
Dead Giveaway
You Belong To Me
Sure To Fall
Nice Way
Back Off Boogaloo

Old Wave
In My Car
Hopeless
Alibi
Be My Baby
She's About A Mover
I Keep Forgettin'
Picture Show Life
As Far As We Can Go
Everybody's In A Hurry But Me
Going Down

Time Takes Time
Weight Of The World
Don't Know A Thing About Love
Don't Go Where The Road Don't Go
Golden Blunders
All In The Name Of Love
After All These Years
I Don't Believe You
Runaways
In A Heart Beat
What Goes Around

Vertical Man
One
What In The...World
Mindfield
King Of Broken Hearts
Love Me Do
Vertical Man
Drift Away
I Was Walkin'
La De Da
Without Understanding
I'll Be Fine Anywhere
Puppet
I'm Yours

I Wanna Be Santa Claus
Come On Christmas, Christmas Come On
Winter Wonderland
I Wanna Be Santa Claus
The Little Drummer Boy
Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer
Christmas Eve
The Christmas Dance
Christmas Time Is Here Again
Blue Christmas
Dear Santa
White Christmas
Pax Um Biscum (Peace Be With You)

Ringo Rama
Eye To Eye
Missouri Loves Company
Instant Amnesia
Memphis In Your Mind
Never Without You
Imagine Me There
I Think Therefore I Rock N Roll
Trippin' On My Own Tears
Write One For Me
What Love Wants To Be
Lover First, Ask Questions Later
Elizabeth Reigns
English Garden
I Really Love Her

Choose Love
Fading In Fading Out
Give Me Back The Beat
Oh My Lord
Hard To Be True
Some People
Wrong All The Time
Don't Hang Up
Choose Love
Me And You
Satisfied
The Turnaround
Free Drinks

Liverpool 8
Liverpool 8
Think About You
For Love
Now That She's Gone Away
Gone Are The Days
Give It A Try
Tuff Love
Harry's Song
Pasodobles
If It's Love That You Want
Love Is
R U Ready

Y Not
Fill In The Blanks
Peace Dream
The Other Side Of Liverpool
Walk With You
Time
Everyone Wins
Mystery Of The Night
Can't Do It Wrong
Y Not
Who's Your Daddy

Ringo 2012
Anthem
Wings
Think It Over
Samba
Rock Island Line
Step Lightly
Wonderful
In Liverpool
Slow Down

Postcards from Paradise
Rory And The Hurricanes
You Bring The Party Down
Bridges
Postcards From Paradise
Right Side Of The Road
Not Looking Back
Bamboula
Island In The Sun
Touch And Go
Confirmation
Let Love Lead

Give More Love
We're On The Road Again
Laughable
Show Me The Way
Speed Of Sound
Standing Still
King Of The Kingdom
Electricity
So Wrong For So Long
Shake It Up
Give More Love
Back Off Boogaloo
Don't Pass Me By
You Can't Fight Lightning
Photograph

and revised non-album tracklist

non-album tracks
Coochy Coochy
It Don’t Come Easy
Early 1970
Back Off Boogaloo
Blindman
Photograph
Down and Out
The Official BBC Children In Need Medley
You Never Know
I Wish I Was a Powerpuff Girl
When You Wish Upon a Star

No Scouse Mouse?

those are on an album

(listed under the "with Other Artists" category, since it's a soundtrack featuring other performers and is not a Ringo solo album)

I'm very interested to see how the Ringo stuff fares.

for the uninitiated approaching my list, the most defensible subset from the POV of songcraft and effort would be something like Single Pigeon, Put It There, Baby's Request, Arrow Through Me, Loveliest Thing, Hope of Deliverance, and No Other Baby... with Waterspout and Magneto as slight glimpses into a weirder world. but if your response to the Macca you've heard is that he's too cloying and sentimental, you might want to punt most of those and go for Secret Friend (unless you find his experimental/electronic tendencies facile) or Oh Woman, Oh Why (unless you find his "rock" mode affected).

currently starting on a ringo deep dive with Sentimental Journey. it's nice so far! can't imagine it satisfying beatles fans (you want ringo to rock out a little) or standards/big-band fans (to quote mst3k, "wow, they don't call john carradine 'the voice' for nothing!") but even if it kind of sounds like your genial uncle pasted over a very nicely-recorded band who he never once met, it's still warm and he's clearly got a smile on his face all throughout... i mean, it's lovable old ringo! good for him for trying his hand.

I started to listen through your list yikes Mumbo is like a shitty Beach Boys outtake (sans vocals, but that hammering 8th note piano style is total Brian Wilson)

ringo's double-tracked vocal on "bye bye blackbird" is pretty winning

hahahaha yeah I made the post-smile beach boys/macca comparison a bit back and it makes more and more sense to me as i think about it.

Big Barn Bed is pretty good but god I find this creepy for some reason
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQzVJlLpriY

70s BW and Macca are p interesting compliments of each other - at opposite ends of the success/functionality scale and yet their approaches to their musical output are kind of similar: stoned, slapdash, occasionally brilliant, often mind-numbingly stupid, casually unpredictable, largely shadows of their former selves. But tbh I prefer BW's output more just because he is so much farther *out* than Macca, and there is a real emotional core to a lot of his stuff (the "tragic figure" arc of his life def figures into this) that Macca rarely dips into. Even when BW is writing stupid throwaways about Johnny Carson, they still contribute to this peak into what feels like an actual, lived in life. Macca is usually more opaque, it's all just goofy smoke and mirrors and platitudes about how much he loves Linda or whatever.

His vocal on "No Other Baby" is I guess what boomer critics had in mind when they longed for a Paul McCartney who used the gifts displayed in the Beatles.

I like this song that I'd never heard before today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSS2ABconDg

shakey, that's a solid summary and I don't disagree with any of it. and yet I have always liked paul's stuff more! maybe i'm just more oriented to his melodic/arranging sensibility or the sense of variety and polish - stuff always sounds more *finished* and i do think there's a greater range of musical territory (all within the pop/rock megagenre obv). i also grew up with more of paul's stuff so that probably shaped my taste as much as my taste informs which i'd rather listen to most days.

meanwhile on ringo-watch: Beaucoups of Blues is another very pleasant listen so far! Nashville Skyline is the inevitable comparison but this feels less idiosyncratic/unique than that - Ringo's voice and the material he ginned up with the band fit very, very comfortably into the early 70s country/AM-gold interzone. he's obviously way more at home dolefully explaining that someone gave him the fastest growing heartache in the West than he is doing "night and day" or even than he is belting out a rocker like "back off boogaloo." i kinda wish that after that initial wave of early hits he'd just decided to be a country artist, but maybe these listens will change my mind...

if Nashville Skyline is an homage to Lefty Frizzell (which is how I hear it) who is Beaucoups of Blues an homage to...? Buck Owens? (I've never listened to it tbc)

Morse Moose and the Grey Goose maybe the most "Paul McCartney album track" song title ever. all the theatrics and drama of a "Live and Let Die,"

ahh, the dramatic build was used in the Twin Freaks version of Coming Up! tyvm for this pointer, Doc Casino.

BOB is solid, and, yeah, Conway Twitty should have worked with Ringo.