(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)
Wings - "Silly Love Songs"
Hit Number 1: May 22, 1976
Stay at Number 1: 5 Weeks
For a good few years after the Beatles' breakup, Paul McCartney and John Lennon had serious beef. If you wanna read the big drama story that led up to all this, I covered the bulk of it in my "The Long and Winding Road" review, which is the song that led to the Beatles breakup in a way. Long story short, McCartney and Lennon never agreed on the types of songs they should write, and they never agreed on how their songs should be produced. The breakup was nasty, and it even led to a court case. The Beatles were doomed from the start, as they became too popular for their own good, and Lennon and McCartney were each too powerful for their own good. Throughout the '70s, Lennon would watch McCartney form his Wings band, and then see Wings become really popular, already hitting #1 three times to this point. (And once when McCartney and his wife, Linda, hit #1 before forming Wings with "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey")
Meanwhile Lennon got off to a hot start after the Beatles breakup, cracking the top ten a few times and hitting #1 in 1974 with "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night," but I still feel like there was some jealousy going on on Lennon's part. After all, Lennon was the last Beatle to score a #1 solo hit. (All of the other Beatles, including Ringo, hit #1 at least twice before Lennon did) Finally, Lennon decided to put his career on hiatus because of his newborn son, Sean, who was born in 1975. (Ironically, on John's 35th birthday) But this didn't stop the beef with McCartney. Lennon wasn't a fan of McCartney's new music with Wings, or at least he claimed to not care for his music, and Lennon at one point made a comment that all McCartney wrote these days were a bunch of "silly love songs." Even music critics at the time were all over McCartney, saying that he only wrote a bunch of sappy love songs. This was kind of true, but also not. "Band on the Run," for instance, is not a love song in the slightest. But McCartney took off with these claims, and came up with "Silly Love Songs."
From McCartney's standpoint, "Silly Love Songs" wasn't just a way of defending himself. He also thought Lennon and others' claims about these love songs were stupid, because that's what a lot of people were doing at this time. Which yes, when you have artists like Barry Manilow, Barbra Streisand and eventually the Commodores circulating on the charts, you're bound to get a lot of those songs. But that was a recipe for success in this moment of music, so why not keep rolling with that? That's the main point McCartney is trying to make in "Silly Love Songs": "You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs/I look around me and I see it isn't so/Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs/And what's wrong with that?" All of this is true. There's nothing wrong with these "silly love songs," and there's more horrific ways people have and would get to #1 with. That's pretty much all the song is. It defends all the silly love songs in the world.
"Silly Love Songs" might just be the most successful single McCartney released as a non-Beatle. Not only did the song hit #1, but it was #1 for five weeks, and became the #1 song of the entire year according to Billboard. Fun fact: It was the #1 song during America's bicentennial, so it has that fun trivia fact attached to it. But is it deserving of all that? I mean sure, I kind of like the song's message, and there are some cool things going on instrumentally. I like the string section the most in the song, but the sax solo is also rich-sounding. When the song first starts out, you're greeted with weird sound effects like a chain rattling noise, and if you haven't heard the song before, you'd likely be wondering what you're about to hear. It's a weird intro, but the song sounds more mature as you're going on. But, there is some repetition going on, and I'm not sure how many times I can listen to Paul and Linda sing "I love you" before it starts to become maddening. There's also some weird vocal trade offs between those two and Denny Laine that I'm unsure about. "Silly Love Songs" is maybe not quite deserving of all the levels of popularity it got, but I don't mind it all that much. I think at the very least, it's a lighthearted and catchy song, kind of like a lot of other silly love songs. The issues I have with it are kind of reaching a bit, I'll admit.
As for Lennon, he wouldn't come out of his hiatus for another few years. Like McCartney and Wings, we'll actually get to hear from him again too. But you can be rest assured that he wouldn't be writing any silly love songs.
GRADE: 7/10
JUST MISSED:
Silver Convention's "Fly Robin Fly" sequel, the still-groovy but also repetitive "Get Up and Boogie," peaked at #2 behind "Silly Love Songs." It's a 6.
IN POP CULTURE:
In the pilot episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, there's a scene where Will Smith hears Carlton (Alfonso Ribeiro) singing "Silly Love Songs" in the shower. It's a brief appearance for the song, but it's still a pretty funny scene. Here it is:
(I feel like it's worth noting that Will Smith will even appear in this blog down the line)
Yorumlar