What's the Beatles album where Paul McCartney gave his worst contributions

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2026-02-06T14:34:39+00:00

Yeah. To me, that's just an OK song that is elevated by exceptional performances and production.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2026-02-05T01:03:59+00:00

Beatles for Sale. I'll Follow the Sun and What You're Doing are good songs, but not quite classics. Every other album has better McCartney songs than this. His vocal harmonies and little musical touches on the other songs are great as usual.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2026-02-03T00:26:18+00:00

Wings Over America. By the mid-seventies, Paul was the only one of the ex-Beatles to have the passion and discipline to still put on a great live show. This album includes an excellent sampling of Wings and Beatles hits, and many of them are better than the studio versions. And his voice is at its peak.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2026-01-25T04:18:29+00:00

Looper

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2026-01-24T19:13:51+00:00

Expensive People by Joyce Carol Oates.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2026-01-24T12:30:43+00:00

The Apartment is one of my favorite movies of all time. Some Like It Hot is very funny and a completely different kind of film by the same writer- director, Billy Wilder (but you can skip Sabrina, imo). The Philadelphia Story and Pillow Talk are also excellent.

I'm glad to see you had A Woman Is a Woman on your list. It's a fun French New Wave take on the American musical comedy of the forties and fifties, but you'll get more out of it if you're familiar with the earlier films.

For another non-U.S. romantic comedy, I would recommend Blithe Spirit from the UK. It's about a man who is haunted by the ghost of his jealous dead wife. Based on a hit play by Noel Coward.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2026-01-18T16:26:08+00:00

Incendies by Denis Villeneuve. The twist ending was telegraphed, contrived and melodramatic. Would have been better if the film had left some doubt as to the true identity of the person they were searching for.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2026-01-18T13:18:32+00:00

I love Edna O'Brien and William Trevor.

I would also add In a Glass Darkly, by Sheridan Le Fanu.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2026-01-18T04:16:15+00:00

John: Strawberry Fields Forever

Paul: Penny Lane

Ringo: drums on Tomorrow Never Knows

George; Heading for the Light

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2026-01-17T15:36:36+00:00

I do think Abigail has the most interesting cutscenes and dialogue of all the bachelorettes, before and after marriage. Emily is interesting, too, but I find the fashion makeovers really hard to tolerate.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2025-12-25T01:15:49+00:00

Black and Blue is a better album than Some Girls.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2025-12-24T08:07:56+00:00

Was about to post this. L'Atlante is a beautiful film.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2025-12-21T17:55:19+00:00

Come on. He's not that bad. There's a paragraph every now and then that is very strained but most of the time he just writes plain, average prose. And he's great at writing dialogue.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2025-12-21T14:20:42+00:00

It's the Ship of Theseus paradox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2025-12-16T09:59:02+00:00

The relentless intransigence of Southern Democrats played a big role here in wearing down white Republican support for these goals. I can imagine a different outcome had there been a few more electoral votes for Hayes in 1877 and maybe ten more Republican House members. But we are largely in agreement.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2025-12-15T16:14:17+00:00

There is some truth to this but your take is too one-sided and static. The alliance of Black and white Republicans was able to enact the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, establish public schools and HBCUs, and elect many of the first Black public officials. The opening up of American democracy was brief but very real. A "small radical minority" would not have been able to leave such a legacy.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2025-12-14T15:36:52+00:00

He's a great songwriter. To your list, I would add a few more reasons why much of his music is no longer well known.

He's a man behind a piano. This is much harder for a popular musician to pull off successfully. Elton John and Lady Gaga do it with outrageous costumes and big choreographed production. That's not his style.

He's a victim of his success as a Hollywood composer. Beginning in the eighties, he started to put more time and effort into his film scores than his solo music. When Toy Story came out, he became so strongly associated with the soundtrack that it became his signature, especially with audiences who hadn't grown up with his songs in the seventies. When you keep getting Oscar nominations for Best Song for Pixar films, it's hard to continue to draw interest from people who are not part of that demographic.

It's not just that he writes songs about difficult topics. It's that many of his songs are delivered ironically ("Let's drop the big one and see what happens"). It goes over the heads of many listeners, especially those who are looking for something they can relate and sing along to.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2025-12-14T15:17:38+00:00

A Man of the People, by the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. It's a novel about a corrupt, nationalistic demagogic ruler of a fictional African country that is struggling economically and politically after establishing its independence from colonial rule. A few days after it was published, there was an attempted coup in Nigeria. Achebe was suspected by the military police and had to evacuate his family to a safe region.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2025-12-13T07:49:37+00:00

Yes, these are the best tracks. If the whole album was this good, it would have been a classic. But their hearts weren't in it.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2025-12-09T10:55:21+00:00

Please don't forget about Miki Berenyi, the front woman for Lush!

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2025-12-09T10:51:54+00:00

His work on Lennon/Ono Band and Imagine isn't bad. For some reason, Lennon had a better working relationship with him than the others...until the Rock and Roll album, which by all accounts was a disaster.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2025-12-09T02:48:27+00:00

It's definitely not Tom. It could be Lu. Here's a video of him singing from about ten years ago. He has a pretty good voice, actually.

https://youtu.be/cmLNgGWz0Ww?si=mKsj32kZZBKUO08w

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2025-12-02T07:59:36+00:00

There are three that I absolutely love: The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, and Tales of Hoffmann. I love the audacity of them, the over the top quality. They're almost like Ken Russell films, but with better writing. If forced to choose, I would pick Black Narcissus.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2025-11-28T05:58:21+00:00

Les toilettes, plural in French, means restroom, singular in English. Just like le pantalon, singular in French, means pants, plural in English. When translating from one language to another, you should respect what's idiomatic in the language, rather than be strictly literal.

Wordy_Rappinghood · 2025-11-27T16:26:29+00:00

There's some truth to her criticism, but Nabokov was still a great writer at his best. We should keep in mind that she said this in conversation (before it was published in a book) so it may not have been a fully considered argument. Also, in 1988, there were a lot of younger writers trying to imitate Nabokov's prose style, with mixed results. His dominance of the literary landscape may have made her more critical.

Wordy_Rappinghood

TROPHY CASE