News The song Paul McCartney refuses to perform anymore
All musicians should be proud of the kind of music they make. Despite not being in love with every track that comes out of your head, there’s always a sense of pride that comes with being able to get millions of fans on their feet to chant along to whichever great song you had in the pipeline. While the number of singalongs at Paul McCartney shows are far too many to count on one hand, Macca admitted that his attempt at a political anthem in the 2000s had a different effect than intended.
Then again, McCartney was never the type to tell people how to live their lives. If anything, this was the same man who took a few jabs at his old bandmate John Lennon because he was getting too political, getting outwardly hostile towards him on his solo track ‘Too Many People’ from RAM.
As the years went on, McCartney would find various inroads to throw his hat into the ring as well. Outside of his first banned single ‘Give Ireland Back to the Irish’, he would continue to spread the word about his philosophies whenever he could, putting songs like ‘Big Boys Bickering’ and ‘Looking for Changes’ amid his typical love songs.
McCartney probably knew not to get too close to political material in his solo career, though. Nothing divides the room better than politics, so imagine if the guy known for writing masterpieces like ‘Silly Love Songs’ and ‘Another Day’ tried his hand at writing about his problems with war propaganda or the American stock market.
By 2001, there was one tragedy too powerful for McCartney to ignore. On September 11th, 2001, McCartney was in New York with his girlfriend Heather Mills when the attack on the World Trade Center took place, watching the entire scene from a grounded plane. As relief funds began pouring in for the city of New York, McCartney would do his part by penning the song ‘Freedom’, meant to bring a sense of optimism back to the American people.
Right after they were done licking their wounds, the Bush administration started taking that mindset differently. Outside of being patriotic, the American people would see the government throw them into war overseas, including bringing a blind sense of patriotism that frowned upon anyone who didn’t agree with what those in power had to say.
While McCartney was proud to have helped the American people at the time, he admitted to pulling back on the song afterwards, telling Pitchfork, “I thought it was a great sentiment, and immediately post-9/11, I thought it was the right sentiment. But it got hijacked. And it got a bit of a militaristic meaning attached itself to it, and you found Mr Bush using that kind of idea rather a lot in [a way] I felt altered the meaning of the song”.
It’s not hard to see what the people latched onto, either. Compared to those who were just looking to come together in harmony after a national tragedy, the more feeble-minded seemed to take McCartney’s lines about “fighting for the RIGHT” a bit too seriously, eventually trying to use the song to advocate for the right-leaning politics.
Ever since the 2000s, the song has been scrubbed clean from most of McCartney’s setlist, and there haven’t been very many times that he brought it back either. He may have gone in with the best intentions, but this is one of the few times where the meaning of the song is out of the hands of the songwriter.
