It’s the end of the week, and I want to send everyone off into the weekend with the best vibes possible. That’s why the Daily Music Picks newsletter features a weekly segment called Fun Song Fridays! Regardless of era, genre, or style, the criterion is simple: it must deliver the joy and excitement we all need in our lives.
You can access the entire Fun Song Fridays archive here. A playlist featuring the songs covered with this segment is coming soon!
Hello! 😊👋
Welcome to a new edition of the Daily Music Picks newsletter!
Today’s music pick pays tribute to a roaring rocker for Band on the Run’s 50th anniversary.
Genre: Rock, Glam Rock
Label: Apple
Release Date: November 30, 1973
Vibe: ✈️
I’ll be honest: I originally wasn’t going to publish any tribute to Band on the Run.
Part of the reason is, controversial as it may be, I’m not a diehard Beatles or Paul McCartney fan. I can appreciate the extremely long tail of the former’s cultural influence and the latter’s facility with writing catchy hooks, but that’s more or less where it ends. I don’t seek out the Beatles music and play it on repeat on my home stereo. But, and it’s a sizable “but,” a taco joint in Ottawa, Canada, changed my tune (pun somewhat intended—I’m too lazy to change the end of the sentence to something less on the nose).
I was sitting in this restaurant with my wife, and almost immediately, I noticed they had a crate full of vinyl sitting next to the bar and a turntable hooked up to the house’s PA system. No canned streaming playlist, no ambient doldrums. Just honest-to-goodness greatness on wax. As we were putting in our drink orders, one of the bartenders lowered the needle down on Band on the Run, and as soon as those opening guitar chords kicked in, I thought to myself, maybe I’d made a mistake with the newsletter content. How could I ignore this album as part of my content strategy? Had I no regard for overarching consumer tastes?
“Let’s see if this enthusiasm holds beyond the title track,” I told myself. I thought it would take several songs to decide and admit I was wrong. Ultimately, it took the first half of “Jet,” the biggest crowd-pleaser on an LP full of them. We sang along to every word, including the world-famous “oooo-ooooo-oo-ooooooohs.” At some point, I saw that nearly every person in the packed restaurant was doing the same thing. Halfway through a bite of taco or guac, it didn’t matter. No one would let the opportunity to join in pass them by.
So, dear reader, this post is my mea culpa. I apologize to McCartney stans everywhere for thinking I could overlook this track, which is about as perfect as early-70s, arena-sized glam rock gets. Consider it, and the rest of the album, Ottawa approved.
👉 Don’t forget to click the album image to stream the album on your favorite platform 👈
Sir Paul at his post-Beatles best.
I love music, never found much with the Beatles or Sir Paul’s solo stuff that I can really get into. It took reading The Beatles: The Biography for me to gain context on why they were such a huge thing. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35539
I’m still not a fan, but I have come to terms with the significance of what they accomplished and all the doors they opened that we take for granted. Enjoyed The Beatles Get Back documentary, but I could watch any band work in the studio. Still amazing what they were doing and the boundaries they pushed that led to so many great bands turning the studio into band member X.
Full disclosure: The White Album has always been the unicorn, I desperately love that album whilst I can’t really get into much else from the Fab Four. McCartney III and the Imagined version have stuck with me but little else has.