“Granny shit” is one of the most devastating put-downs in the history of pop music. Typically enough, it came from John Lennon, who is another major candidate for perhaps being the most vicious voice to come out of The Beatles.
Not afraid to share his ire for a whole range of The Beatles’ work, Lennon’s silver tongue was often scything at his band. It didn’t matter if it was his own or another member of the band’s; Lennon called it as he saw it. But the person he was most often calling out was Paul McCartney.
Flying right in the face of The Beatles’ reputation as daring pop mavericks, single-handedly turning rock music into an art form with their forward-thinking ways, was Paul McCartney’s weakness for whimsy. The man loved vintage music hall, musical theatre and vaudeville songwriting and had been putting it into his songwriting since the very first flushes with the form as a teenager. Of course, the man was also a dyed-in-the-wool rocker who loved that medium too, and in the early days of The Beatles, that was obviously going to be the kind of music they made.
As time went on, and Beatlemania went from being a fad to a solid descriptor of the human condition in the 1960s, the band was given license to experiment. Each Fab was given their avenue to bring to the table, Lennon bringing elements of confessional folk music, George Harrison bringing out the sitar, and McCartney showing just how much of a musical omnivore he was and still is to this day—driving his band to incorporate elements of soul music, harder rock sounds and, yes, some of his patented granny music.
Over the rest of the band’s history, McCartney’s more whimsical side has been a target for basically everyone with a passing interest in their music. Songs like ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da‘ and ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ are often among their most pilloried songs and, fair enough, they probably should be. I’m on record as being a fan of McCartney’s more whimsical side, but even I know the lad’s pushing it with both of those tracks.
Does the Paul McCartney ‘granny music’ era have hits?
The truth is, those two songs, along with children’s favourites like ‘Yellow Submarine’ and ‘All Together Now’ take a lot of undue flak. If you look at the tracks McCartney actually wrote, influenced by his love of songwriting from the 1930s, 1920s and even earlier, you’ll find a number of his best tunes. Works of genuine songwriting prowess that show better than most just what a chameleonic, dextrous musician McCartney was. So let’s have a look and see which of his “granny music” songs are the best of the bunch.
Now, I’m taking ‘granny music’ to mean songs explicitly informed by music that was vintage at the time of its writing and recording, not just sentimentality. There will be those who tell you that ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ is one of those songs, and those people are wrong; that is a song directly inspired by Brian Wilson and ‘God Only Knows’ by The Beach Boys. No, we’re talking about songs like the second-place finish in this imaginary race, ones that illustrate a point I made earlier.
Remember when I said this style of music was informing the music of Macca from the beginning? Yeah, that’s because the man wrote ‘When I’m 64‘ when he was 15 years old, the talented so-and-so. The song wasn’t wholesale copied onto Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but the version that made it onto that classic album wasn’t far off the original draft. Retaining the vintage charm, panache and heart of the era, it’s pastiching without swerving into schmaltz.
However, the absolute best version of that patented Paul McCartney granny music comes two songs earlier on the same album. ‘She’s Leaving Home’ is a kitchen sink drama wrapped in a vintage Hollywood ballad that still doesn’t so much tug at the heartstrings as it does wrench them from your very chest. It’s still one of the most powerful, vulnerable moments in the whole Beatles back catalogue and living proof of something that should go without saying. Grannies have impeccable taste, and sometimes music for them is some of the best ever made.