April 23, 2015
Kurt Cobain, who said "I like the Beatles, but I hate Paul McCartney"...
... sang "And I Love Her" his way, in a newly revealed recording, you can listen to here. Compare Kurt's darkness to the the Beatles original which you can listen to here.
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27 comments:
McCartney's post Beatles music is pretty bad. So is John Lennon's.
Did the assignment.
Would have liked a trigger warning.
Both versions made me laugh.
Too bad, Cobain didn't live long enough to appreciate fully the greatest rockin' Beatle. Yeah, Lennon had moments of genius and was an intellectual and all that but Paul was a true rock'n'roll idiot savant. I saw him live last year and it was amazing.
Cobain showed off his being drugged out. Big talent. Taking pills and moaning.
The Beatles were great singers and very creative.
If you don't like Cobain or The Beatles... well, I'm most interested in hearing from people who like both! If you don't like either...
Paul gets a bad rap--this is the guy who did "Helter Skelter" after all.
I think it was at the recent Saturday Night Live anniversary show that Sir Paul tried to sing "Maybe I'm Amazed" so we have to add true courage to his long list of admirable qualities.
I always assumed that Kurt Cobain was John Lennon and Paul McCartney rolled into one but I could never figure out which other guy was George and which one was Ringo.
McCartney is starting to look like Angela Lansbury.
Paul McCartney songs after The Beatles suck. Wings sucked.
Kurt Cobain, who said "I like the Beatles, but I hate Paul McCartney"..."
If Cobain had any good songs, I've never heard 'em.
He sounds worse than Charles Manson.
For a good song performed (though not originally written) by Kurt Cobain, see "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" and/or "The Man Who Sold the World", both from Nirvana's MTV Unplugged concert. Which is, by most accounts, the single defining performance of the MTV Unplugged series. It certainly is for me. Even my country-music loving wife (I like country - but don't love it) admits that "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" is one of the most powerful songs she's ever heard.
Angela Lansbury was a babe at 19.
As far as any commentary on drugged-out electrified bands, it's all so redundant. Yawn...
In Utero is the best Nirvana album.
I like both, although I'm more of a Stones fan than the Beatles.
I'm not motivated, in the least, to concern myself with people and their critiques and trifles with Beatles'music. Its something that has continuously enriched my life for 50 years, just like Raquel Welch. I'm happy.
That was a very edgy, punk rock thing for Kurt to say. I wonder if he meant it, or was simply trying shock.
Eric the Fruit bat wrote:
I always assumed that Kurt Cobain was John Lennon and Paul McCartney rolled into one but I could never figure out which other guy was George and which one was Ringo.
no that would be Neil Finn.
Cobain would be John Lennon and, Black Sabbath.
I like the Beatles and I love Kurt Cobain/Nirvana.
Not a fan of the Wings crap though which is perhaps why some don't like Paul as much.
I saw Ringo Starr on some show last year - he was surprisingly good.
OK, look, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" really is a great song.
Don't gotta listen to much more from Kurt Cobain, but that thing is good.
If you like "Teen Spirit", let me suggest Silverchair. That's two very young guys: drums and a 6-string guitar and a voice.
It's not edgy at all to say you hate Paul McCartney. The cool thing is to find a way to love him that has nothing to do with sentimentality and sweetness.
I think there are many examples of musicians who've done that, such as The Ramones.
Hmmm… McCartney without sentimentality or sweetness.
I guess you could say Say Say Say was jazzy enough to sound less so, but that was in the music.
Other than that, you'd have to raise McCartney's completely avant garde stuff: Helter Skelter and Why Don't We Do It in the Road.
Even his autobiographical response to Lennon's Strawberry Fields - Penny Lane - was devoid of everything that made Strawberry Fields so astounding: The most psychedelic sound south of I Am the Walrus.
You could say Paul's Magical Mystery Tour was his response to Walrus (and they often competed that way), and hell, it was exactly the same story. A kid's song. A journey without the Lewis Carrol tributes, Bach-esque musical palindromes, or any of its psychedelia.
Again, this is why they worked as a songwriting team. One was sappy and one was rebellious and trippy.
Opposites attracted by the magic of what they could only accomplish as a team.
When he was trying to gain Lennon's approval, McCartney wrote some pretty innovative stuff ... and he was always the best musician of the four. But he is a lightweight and a nitwit, mugging for any camera like the class nerd, and unfailingly turning out that bilge that Lennon called "granny music", all the while pissing off the other three with his need to run everything.
Top 40 hits:
Nirvana - 5
Beatles- 45
Ringo Starr- 12
John Lennon- 13
George Harrison- 15
Paul McCartney- 37
OK, Ann, I will admit that I like both. It's not an equal love as I have about a dozen Nirvana songs on the iPod and the Beatles are my absolute favorites approaching over 200 songs between their albums and their solo efforts. Maybe if Kurt had lived longer there would be more - I have about 20 songs from the Nirvana's successor The Foo Fighters - but who knows.
In any case, there is room in this world for songs about deep introspection, and songs about depression, and songs about joy, and songs about love gone wrong, and songs about love gone wonderfully, and songs that make us laugh. Paul was absolutely brilliant at making optimistic music. By all accounts Kurt was not a happy person. It is not surprising that an unhappy person would dislike silly love songs. It's a dagger to the soul.
As to the cover, I don't find it as dark as advertised. Yes, it is not a peppy rendition, but the original version is somewhat dark as is. Paul's rendition is a bit brooding, almost as if he knows he has found true love but it is going to cost him other things in exchange. He's willing to make that exchange, but there is still that twinge of sorrow. Either that or he is trying to convince himself of a true love that does not really exist, or dreaming about a true love that he does not yet possess. It is like a song from a musical that will have a happy reprise after the conflict is resolved.
stevo: True, but a bit misleading. Nirvana released only three studio albums, a live album, a "B-sides" compilation, and a couple of limited distribution EPs while Kurt was alive. The last two studio albums and the live album went to #1 selling combined over 50 million worldwide.
Grunge was popular 1991-1994 but it didn't necessarily chart well as singles. Keep in mind that during that time the #1s were dominated by soft pop songs and the early edge of what would become the hip-hop dominance. Nirvana was selling a ton of albums while acts like Ace of Base, Paula Abdul, Mariah Carey, and (gasp) Michael Bolton were chart topping. And, really, if you had to choose between "Baby Got Back" and Nirvana's latest single, I think we all know what the correct decision is there.
Say this for McCartney: when the band needed a bass player (Stuart Sutcliffe wasn't much of one, but better than nothing), Paul stepped up. Then he took the most underrated and unappreciated instrument in rock's rhythm section and he became a virtuoso with it. People who focus on the melodies in Beatles and McCartney songs often miss some of the most sophisticated and masterful instrumentation in rock music - Paul's bass lines.
Cobain was really good at interpreting other people's material. Out of 14 songs on Unplugged, six are covers. Of those six, three might be the definitive versions at this point -- Jesus doesn't want me for a sunbeam, The man who sold the world, and Where did you sleep last night?
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