I’m just gonna come right out and drop a hot take: Paul McCartney is pretty darn good at music. Put down the pitchforks and I can explain. Well, first off, have you heard “Arrow Through Me” yet? Or “Calico Skies”? Or “This One”? Dude can play practically every instrument worth playing (sorry, theremin lovers, but I’m just tipping all the sacred cows right now), and at 75 he’s still a thriving live performer. I want “Temporary Secretary” played at my funeral, and I hope that this blog is considered a legal document to qualify as my will.

The point is, the guy is an unstoppable pop music machine. I mean, he doesn’t always hit them out of the park, but he has an unbelievably high batting average.

Which is surprising given his extremely poor batting stance.

 

In the hands of a lesser pop maestro, a song like “Mother Nature’s Son” could easily fall into “douchey guy playing guitar under a tree on a college campus even though he’s on academic probation for having a 1.39 GPA” territory. But McCartney resists the urge to deliver a message, instead painting a simple but vivid picture of a soothing, care-free sunny day. It serves as a welcome breath of fresh air on arguably the most chaotic side of vinyl the Beatles ever released, surrounded by an assortment of frantic and manic tracks like “Birthday,” “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey,” and “Helter Skelter.”

So why isn’t it any higher than #172? Because Paul McCartney–and John Lennon, and George Harrison, and, what the heck, Ringo Starr too–is pretty darn good at music, that’s why.