Today’s classic song of the day is “Silly Love Songs” by Paul McCartney & Wings. It was released as a single (with “Wings” as the artist) in April of 1976 and was a hit all over the world, hitting the top ten in Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, and the UK. Here in the U.S., “Silly Love Songs” peaked at #1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts. Billboard named it the #1 song for the entire year.
Officially, “Silly Love Songs” was written by “Paul and Linda McCartney,” although you and I both know that Paul did all the work. It was supposedly written in response to critics (and his old mate John Lennon) complaining that all Mr. McCartney wrote were lightweight romantic tunes. So Paul leaned into it. As he later recalled:
“The song was, in a way, to answer people who just accuse me of being soppy. The nice payoff now is that a lot of the people I meet who are at the age where they’ve just got a couple of kids and have grown up a bit, settling down, they’ll say to me, ‘I thought you were really soppy for years, but I get it now! I see what you were doing!’“
That’s exactly what Sir Paul said in the lyrics:
You’d think that people would’ve had enough of silly love songs
But I look around me and I see it isn’t so
Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs
And what’s wrong with that?
I’d like to know
What impresses me about “Silly Love Songs” is all the wonderful melodies stacked on top of one another. It’s like Paul was showing off, just effortlessly tossing off catchy melodies as if it were nothing. By my count, the song includes eight different melodies, all of them capable of standing on their own in any other song. (And the bass line is pretty cool, too.) It’s a masterclass in songwriting, all under the guise of a “silly love song.” It may be lightweight but, damn, it’s catchy—showing that Paul McCartney was a tunesmith par excellence.
And here’s your daily bonus video of the day, the official music video for Paul McCartney’s “Silly Love Songs,” including some footage of Sir Paul and Wings in concert. How can anybody not like this song?
