I
watched Paul McCartney’s performance of Maybe I’m Amazed on the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special today
with my head in my hands. It made me want to cry, and not for the right reasons.
It’s
no secret that I’m a big McCartney fan. His work ethic and output continues to inspire
me. If you’ve only seen his unsurprisingly Beatle-heavy public appearances in recent years you wouldn’t know
it, but he’s still a diverse and highly-creative artist. His albums over the
last decade have been, for the most part, excellent. Check out 2005’s Nigel
Godrich-produced Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, or 2008’s largely improvised
ambient / electronica / psychedelic rock album Electric Arguments (made with
producer and Killing-Joke-bassist Youth under the pseudonym The
Fireman) for starters. If you haven’t time then read the reviews, which are
mostly glowing.
His
live shows are great. He plays for nearly three hours without pausing for a
sip of water. I'm not saying this is a hallmark of a good performer – there’s
nothing wrong with being hydrated – but his stamina is impressive. You'd never think you were watching a seventy-two-year-old.
Despite
his love for forging into new ground, each time he does a show that's widely televised he
tends to lean on the songs he wrote forty or fifty years ago, many of which no
longer comfortably sit in his range. Maybe I’m Amazed is the biggest culprit.
It’s so high, only dogs should be able to hear it.
It’s
no wonder it’s now a challenge. He had an exceptionally wide vocal range as a
young man. He still has for his age, but the chances of a seventy-two-year-old
replicating the vocal fluidity of a twenty-eight-year old are unlikely. Why does he bring it on himself? Why did he choose a song he can no longer manage
unless the wind blows in the right direction? And why will nobody tell him? If
they do, why won't he listen?
(I suppose it's hard to put an ex-Beatle in his place).
These are the things which stoke the public's perception that he can no longer sing. He seems to keep walking into it. It's like a delusion. It makes me sad. He's so much better than what he presents; what he can almost get away with in a live setting is painfully exposed on television. I dread to think how many million people watched it.
Come
on, Macca. Embrace your age. Sing the songs that fit your voice, or you've written recently, rather than trying to do something you might not be able
pull off. Change a few keys to suit your current register. There’s no
shame in this. Everybody does it. Maybe I’m Amazed is defining moment of your career, but
I’d much rather people remembered how effortlessly you sang it in the Seventies
than saw you struggling to keep control of it now.