Much less the Beatles.
That song is terrible. It's slow and boring, but without being touching and sweet. The words are stupid and clumsy in both English and French. It's translinguistically dreadful!
I realize that Paul McCartney sometimes just throws things into the kitchen sink to write his lyrics (witness "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey"), but he asked for help on this one! Sometimes people just need to say, "No, Paul, that is stupid. People will buy it anyway, but then they will hate you for it."
Stick to German if you're feeling multilingual ("Komm, gib mir deine Hand" is great.).
2 comments:
Okay, so it's quaint, treacly tripe. BUT, there are FAR worse songs on Rubber Soul -- didn't ANYONE smack Paul on the nose and say "No!" after hearing "The Word"? -- and at least the sentiment feels genuinely charming.
There really are much worse songs on Rubber Soul - I can't even bring myself to listen to "Run For Your Life" most of the time. And Dave, "The Word" has an excuse - John and Paul were stoned out of their minds when they came up with it and wrote the lyrics with a box of crayons.
But I actually like "Michelle" a lot for its unique uses of chromatic harmony and melody, even though Paul was trying to parody Charles Aznavour. And the help he got was from John Lennon, who wrote the middle part (so he has to take the blame for some of this too), and his friend Ivan's wife, who translated "these are words that go together well" into French for him.
I do agree about Paul's lyrics sometime being unbearable...this isn't one of those times for me.
("Komm, gib mir deine Hand," is okay...and what about "Sie liebt dich?")
Post a Comment