(The Hit Hammer is where I'm reviewing each #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. Starting from when the chart started in 1958 and eventually working my way to the present. To see my inspiration and more information about this blog, please CLICK HERE)
Paul & Linda McCartney - "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey"
Hit Number 1: September 4, 1971
Stay at Number 1: 1 Week
Paul McCartney is my favorite Beatle. John Lennon often gets credit as the most talented one, and perhaps that is so, but McCartney was the best songwriter. His compositions included masterpieces such as "Yesterday" and "Penny Lane", while also writing goofy fun sing-alongs such as "Paperback Writer", which also happens to be my favorite Beatles song. He could write a hauntingly beautiful song about regret, but could also get you moving with stuff that didn't make much sense. What's funny about McCartney, is that he seemed to take the breakup of the Beatles the hardest, even though he was the main one that caused the breakup to happen. (More on that in "The Long and Winding Road" review) Some see McCartney's first #1 solo record "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" as a coherent message about McCartney's feelings about the Beatles breakup. To me that's a stretch. I think the song is a wicked LSD trip of a song. It's a rollercoaster left unfinished, that leaves you flying off the edge to your inevitable death if you try to understand it.
It's not even just this one song too. The entire Ram album, which was McCartney's first solo album, is full of weird little drug trips of songs. The Wikipedia page for "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" labels the song's genre as "progressive pop" or "art rock." Instead what I see are two made up genres of music to try to put this song under something. It's the last #1 song that has any ties to the nearly dead psychedelic era. I've heard someone say before that the Ram album is like Paul and Linda speaking their own language to each other. That's one way of looking at it. My own theory that I like to make up about the album is that the Beatles breakup was really getting to McCartney and he temporarily went nuts, with the result being Ram. Is that unlikely? Yes. Is it still fun to to think about it that way? Of course it is.
All jokes aside, there is an intriguing backstory to "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey", so the message of the song isn't completely out of left field. The song is split into two parts, with the sleepy "Uncle Albert" part and the more catchy "Admiral Halsey" part. Uncle Albert was supposedly a real person, a real-life uncle to McCartney. In the "Uncle Albert" section, McCartney apologizes to this Uncle Albert, and is sorry for any pain his generation might have caused him. In McCartney's own words he said: "He's someone I recall fondly, and when the song was coming it was like a nostalgia thing." McCartney has never really said one way or another why he was so sorry about his generation, and why he specifically apologized to Albert instead of anyone else. Maybe we can chalk that up to another trait of the song's randomness.
Then in grand Ram fashion, the song suddenly switches over to the "Admiral Halsey" part of the song. This is the part of the song people remember, and is probably the part of the song that helped it become a #1 hit. This is the part of the song where we really get to hear Linda, as she sings the monster hook "Hands across the water! Heads across the sky!" This is a good spot to mention that Linda was not a professional singer, as she was a photographer and animal rights activist first. But admittedly, she really sings the hell out of that one line. This is also the part of the song that makes the least amount of sense. Just like Uncle Albert, Admiral Halsey was a real person too, referring to Fleet Admiral William "Bull" Halsey, who died in 1959. But it hardly matters that he was a real person when you have Linda shouting her fun, but still nonsensical lines and Paul muttering about butter pies, and having to put the butter in the pie because it "wouldn't melt." What does that have to do with Admiral Halsey? Oh yeah, and then there's a part about being a gypsy, and needing to "live a little" and "get around." Don't even try to ask me to interpret this part of the song.
Strangely enough though, McCartney got away with something here. He adds fun little sound effects in the song such as a thunderstorm, a telephone dialing, McCartney speaking with a "telephone effect," and a seashore with chirping birds and wind. If there was anyone that could get away with something like this, it was McCartney. It's the kind of song to where you're never quite sure what's going on, but you can't stop listening to it. It's like its own little wonderland. You're curious about what direction this song is going in. One minute you're being treated to a droopy song about apologizing to a past generation, then all of a sudden you're thrusted into a whirlwind of nonsense. It's like playing Clue one minute, then before you know it you're playing Candy Land. Though while it's not my favorite song McCartney has ever written, I can't bring myself to dislike it.
I think one of the things I appreciate is the creativity here. I feel like we're getting a deeper look at what goes on in McCartney's mind with this song. It doesn't make much sense, but maybe McCartney's goal was to write a catchy enough song to where we listeners can't stop listening, but with crazy lyrics that are supposed to make us think. Again though, trying to understand this thing is almost futile. It's a bunch of unfinished song fragments that McCartney stitched together and miraculously made them work. I enjoy the catchy lines, the shamelessness and the creative work of a Beatle who was just getting his feet wet in a post-Beatles career.
GRADE: 7/10
10 ALERT!!!:
The Undisuputed Truth's undisputed soul masterpiece "Smiling Faces Sometimes" peaked at #3 behind "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey". Smiling faces tell lies, and I got proof that it's a 10.
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