bowie vs. mccartney

fun fact: mr. mccartney's four and half years older than mr. jones

are we voting for the song or the artist? neither of these are my favourites by either, really, but this is still really hard. I mean, any poll where I have to choose between Bowie and something else would be a no-brainer, but...

Macca at his prime was probably a better songwriter than Bowie in his prime... But Bowie's prime went on longer, and he's just way cooler.

bowie is definitely cooler. but even shit songs like 'silly love songs' are kind of musically amazing. the bassline itself. and I think i like Ram and McCartney II a lot more than any individual Bowie album.

Low is cool.

Low is toft!

"take it away" is a way better 'past his "peak"' single than anything bowie managed

Will stan for "This One," "Press," "My Brave Face," "No Other Baby" from Run Devil Run and "Ever Present Past" from Memory Almost Full as much as I would for "Hallo Spaceboy," "Jump, They Say," and several tracks from Earthling, Heathen, and Reality. They've got more "post-peak" moments than the CW says.

neither of these are my favourites by either, really,

"Jet" is one of my favourites by McCartney (solo). Voted Bowie... obviously.

Something like a short list of what I would particularly stan for from the last 17 years:

"Somedays"
"From a Lover to a Friend"
"She's Given Up Talking"
"Heather"
"Jenny Wren"
"Friends to Go"
"English Tea"
"Riding to Vanity Fair"
"You Tell Me"

(Lots of others that I quite like also.)

I fear it will take until McCartney is long dead until people realise how good some of his later solo work actually is.

Probably not long dead...

The one that sounded like a Wilburys tune:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2M9MZ5BZas

the fireman >>>> tin machine

I love Bowie, but he seems to be only as good as the people he is collaborating with. Visconti, Eno, etc. He needs people to channel ideas through. McCartney, post-Beatles, probably could have used a sounding board as well, but he seems the more likely candidate to walk into a room alone with a guitar and emerge with a great song. Everything I've heard about Bowie has stressed his work ethic and instincts for shaping loose demos, with the help of smart producers, into the final products. I don't really like any solo McCartney albums, or at least there are none I listen to. But I could say the same about Bowie post "Scary Monsters," really. A more interesting debate could be Macca vs. Bowie, '80s and beyond, when both are clearly past their prime. Or even Bowie vs. Madonna, since I've always felt they operate similarly, and she sort of took the baton from him post Let's Dance.

Well, let me ask what you're asserting McCartney's prime was. The Beatles? Because I like his more recent albums more than his '70s albums on the whole.

I dunno, part of me can't help but think that McCartney's solo work ends up getting unfairly shafted a little. I mean, surely by now a song like 'Maybe I'm Amazed' should have become a standard, in the same way as his Beatles work or Lennon's 'Imagine', for example. While that song has been covered a few times, it still has a feel of "buried treasure" about it. McCartney fans know it, general music fans know it, but for some reason or other it hasn't become a standard to the same level as a 'Let It Be', a 'Hey Jude', an 'Imagine'... hell, even a 'Jealous Guy' or a 'My Sweet Lord'.

Then again, what McCartney post-Beatles tracks have become standards? I suppose 'Live and Let Die' is a big one, no doubt because it was a Bond theme and GNR obviously did a very well-known cover of it. 'Mull Of Kintyre'? Very well known but can't think of any successful covers of it. One or two tracks on Band On The Run are world-famous but seldom covered, but there's a lot on Band On The Run which still has a "buried treasure" feel about it: 'Bluebird' and 'Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five' are great, but would anyone who isn't a McCartney fan or a general music geek know how they go?

I really like Nineteen Hundred ...

I've always found it amazing that McCartney is one of the few dudes who has written many of the best songs of all time ... and also many of the worst. And then when he hooked up with Stevie Wonder, a fellow genius, the result is Ebony and Ivory. Same with Macca and Michael's misfire.

xpost Yeah, obv. Macca peaked with the Beatles, but still managed some huge hits in the '70s. He was sidelined by the '80s, though, and while he has scattered good or even great songs, it's really erratic, and definitely not up to the standard of his reputation. Bowie, otth, there his no "definitive" sound, so it sort of lets him getting away with doofing around, even if the results are equally, or even more erratic. Because being erratic is sort of his thing. Ch-ch-ch-changes. Macca is always unfairly held up to the standard and sound of the Beatles. Would be great if he collaborated with people more often, because those co-Elvis stuff are great.

T/S: 1984 v. Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five.

mccartney is obviously the more talented musician - composer, arranger, player. bowie is a better performer but only by a hair. he's much more of a performance artist than mccartney the craftsman. mccartney's best work walks all over Station to Station. but i voted for bowie because suffragette city rules and i don't remember how jet goes

I hope nobody gets the wrong end of the stick here and thinks I'm slagging McCartney off or anything, but I do think that the fluctuating quality of his songwriting output has been going on much, much longer than people think. I actually think that it's been a given that McCartney's songwriting yo-yo's up and down and that it's not just limited to his solo career, even though it is more obvious in his solo career because he's on his own and he doesn't have the contributions/compositions of a John Lennon or George Harrison to add more consistency to his albums.

Let's take a look at his contributions to The White Album, for example:

1. Back In The U.S.S.R. - A pleasant enough rocker with a Beach Boys pastiche segment. It's a very good track and opens the album well, although it's definitely not as superb a song as, say, 'Yesterday' is. McCartney would explore the influence that the Beach Boys had on him with tracks like 'Dear Boy' from Ram, which personally I find a superior song to 'Back In The U.S.S.R.'

2. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da - A reggae pastiche of sorts. Very well known, melodic and catchy, but also much maligned.

3. Wild Honey Pie - Absolute garbage. Only gets a free pass from people because: 1. it's on a Beatles album and 2. it's a short segment on a double album. Would have fit snugly on McCartney and quite possibly would have been one of the worst things on there.

4. Martha My Dear - Piano exercise moulded into a song. Would have fit snugly on Ram. Good, but not great.

5. Blackbird - An absolute classic. Wonderful song.

6. Rocky Raccoon - Absolute garbage and again, gets a free pass because it's on a Beatles album. If this had appeared on a Wings albums everyone would be calling out how shit it is and rightly so.

7. Why Don't We Do It In The Road? - Take the theme of the lyrics out of the equation and it's just a rote rocker with a blues progression dashed off in a cigarette break.

8. I Will - Look folks, a silly love song! Pleasant and melodic as you'd expect from McCartney, but in the back catalogue of a man who has written (to paraphrase a less talented songwriter) "a million love songs", this is just merely good. 'Maybe I'm Amazed' it ain't.

9. Birthday - Yet another rock'n'roll/blues type of chord progression/track. While not a superb song at its core, it's the attack with which The Beatles play the track that makes it.

10. Mother Nature's Son - Great. Easily as good as, ooh, 'Calico Skies' from Flaming Pie. And that's very high praise.

11. Helter Skelter - Again, not a superb song at its core, but it's rescued by the ferocity of the playing.

12. Honey Pie - One of Paul's "old-timey" pastiche songs, but certainly not one of his better songs in this vein. He would perfect this type of track on 'You Gave Me The Answer' on Venus & Mars which knocks this song into a cocked hat.

A reggae pastiche of sorts

this is a new one I must admit

think you're mostly otm tho, although I disagree about Rocky, there's something bleak and slightly off about the lyric that really puts it over imo

Yeah, I said "of sorts" because while McCartney was undoubtedly influenced by reggae while he was writing the song, it didn't really come out as what I'd personally say was anything like reggae. I get the impression for some reason that The Beatles, talented as they were, wouldn't have been able to actually play reggae convincingly enough. 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da' certainly isn't convincing in that sense, even if there was some influence in there and it was intended to be kinda in that vein.

the beatles could totally pull off little richard on "kansas city/hey-hey-hey-hey!" with paul on lead vox. i bet if they'd wanted to do straight reggae they'd have been just fine. hell "keep your hands off my baby" sounds like proto-reggae

I think Martha is great. If it were on a Kinks album people would be all "ooh" and "ahh" about it.

If anything, that one is slightly dragged down by the arrangement, them horns and all.

I'm generally with you on yr overall point though.

given that 1968 is the first year anything that can credibly be classified as "reggae" was released I am a little skeptical that McCartney was "undoubtedly influenced" by sucha a small handful of singles, but I suppose it's possible.

Davies would have stuck better jokes into "Martha", that's for sure

xxxxpost:

But, that's just The White Album! If you go back through the other Beatles albums and just list the McCartney-written tracks, you'll find for every nugget of gold like 'Yesterday', there's something cripplingly pointless like 'Tell Me What You See'. Revolver is an exception, all of the McCartney-written songs are gold (bar 'Yellow Submarine', which gets away with it because it's a kids song written for Ringo to sing). But! When you think about it, that's only FIVE McCartney sung-songs on the record. I imagine he probably wrote more, but they just weren't that good. So yeah, McCartney's fluctuating quality control is hardly news if one was to look hard enough!

The other point:

McCartney can sing, Bowie can't.

and I love Bowie! But when McCartney fails another element or two saves the track: his voice, bass playing, ear for the arrangement. Bowie has none of these natural talents.

Xxxp

Ha true

xxxpost:

Well, the "Desmond" in the song was apparently a reference to Desmond Dekker!

Alfred otm, I think

that being said I don't really like either of these poll options all that much, so not voting.

haha okay waht I've never heard that!

xp

...and Desmond Dekker covered 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da' too!

Woke up, got out of bed,
Slaved for breakfast till every mouth was fed...

But yeah, I definitely prefer McCartney as a singer to Bowie. Don't get me wrong, there's a fair amount of Bowie vocal performances which move me a great deal: 'Fantastic Voyage' and "Heroes" to name two. I find his voice unbearable on things like 'Teenage Wildlife', though. As for McCartney, I think he went through a phase in the late '60s/early '70s where he couldn't do the "ragged" voice like he used to: his vocals on 'Oh! Darling' and 'Monkberry Moon Delight' border on comical, but I do think touring did his voice wonders while he was in Wings, and his voice held out well for a remarkable amount of time. Only in recent years (and by that I mean from maybe Driving Rain onwards) have I begun to notice McCartney's voice degrading to the point where now he certainly has a worn quality to his voice.

i like some of mccartney's solo stuff but singling out white album tracks and deeming them inferior to stuff on flaming pie is a few steps too far for me. and i like flaming pie!

But I said 'Calico Skies' was as good as 'Mother Nature's Son', not better than. I think 'Calico Skies' is a wonderful song, the live version in particular.

Having said that, I don't know why it's difficult to understand the viewpoint that someone may prefer 'Beautiful Night' to tracks like 'Why Don't We Do It In The Road?', 'Honey Pie', 'Rocky Raccoon' etc. I certainly do! On the other hand, you won't find me hailing stuff like 'Back In The Sunshine Again', 'Heaven On A Sunday', 'Really Love You' or 'Used To Be Bad' as being up there with McCartney's best either.

How could I have forgotten this one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTht9VqZAe4

Yeah, I have a hell of a lot of time for that one!

On the day that I die I'd like jokes to be told
And stories of old to be rolled out like carpets

^ I love the directness of this lyric, and I wish McCartney would do it more. He's said himself in the past that he always shies away from getting too personal in songs. Having said that, though, I'm sure there is quite a fair amount of personal stuff in his songs, but he chooses to mask it a lot of the time.

i cant believe so many people consider "Wild Honey Pie" complete garbage, even one of the worst songs the Beatles ever put out. it's an equally goofy and menacing interlude that perfectly suits the paranoia of the white album. sounds cool, and it's short. what's to hate?

It's goofy, sure, but menacing and paranoid? Hmm. Just sounds like McCartney knocking something quick off to me, kinda like 'Bip Bop Link', which of course isn't on a Beatles album and therefore doesn't get the free pass that 'Wild Honey Pie' does because it has The Beatles' name on it.

it's the atonal guitar figure and the fucked pitch/harmonic effect that it's run through along with the vocals that make it a genuinely creepy song, not just a paul goof. good mood setter for the goofy/menacing Bungalow Bill.

mccartney is obviously the more talented musician - composer, arranger, player. bowie is a better performer but only by a hair.

Fattest hair ever..

I mean, I own about three Bowie lps but c'mon!

McCartney can sing, Bowie can't.

whaaaaat's this supposed to mean, that macca is a technically better singer or what? bowie's one of my favorite singers, and i def think he outsings mercury on under pressure though freddie's prob also a "better" singer. so yeah maybe by some standards macca is a better singer but bowie clearly has the better voice and makes better use of it.

It means that at his peak there were few songs McCartney couldn't sing whereas Bowie opened his mouth and I dove under the couch.

I wish I could have seen this, I have watched footage from the "Serious Moonlight" tour over and over. Alas I was a broke teenager. Can't imagine getting worked up over a McCartney appearance. Fantastic concept all the way through.

http://youtu.be/G1hvOcd3B7Q

mccartney was such a magnetic performer that the beatles couldn't even play live anymore over the screaming girls

can't say the same for bowie

That's a joke... right?

I love David Bowie's voice, it's such a great rock and roll instrument that conjures the spirits in old radio, old records. I like all of those oldies singers and old top 40 culture.

Sometimes McCartney's fans annoy me in the way that really "nice" people who never do anything wrong or say anything bad about anyone can annoy me. To me, the point is not to make mom and dad happy and get all A's. There is a sadness to Bowie's work that is more affecting to me.

That's for sure. McCartney does melancholy but not quite what Bowie sometimes gets at. However ... Bowie for all his instinct/genius has pretty much been more misses than hits since the very early '80s, imo. So my defenses of him stand only up to a point, because I would be lying if I said I had much affection for even the stuff I've liked of his from the past 30+ years. Could any of you make a compelling case for a tracklist for a second volume of Changesbowie? I know McCartney could fill up at least a disc of '80s and beyond stuff, maybe two, that people would call really good.

anguish, menace, solitude, decadence, cold-blooded pomp ... Bowie's voice, for all its limitations, pulls off a lot of things that McCartney's doesn't. But Bowie is playing an entirely different game. He is about the creation of persona, spectacle, atmosphere, and the voice is in service to that. McC otoh is all about the song itself. McC's world is Platonic, and his voice is dedicated to achieving each song's ideal Form as much as possible.

Yeah, I could listen to such a thing, but then again, Changes is to me about hits, and I like Bowie albums. Shit, I remember when people could get seriously gay-bashed for owning a Bowie album. I witnessed it at school. With McCartney, personally I can't get past the "Grandma likes it" factor. I just have no need to hear that stuff no matter how high quality it is, whereas I follow Bowie to this day.

My grandparents can't stand Paul McCartney, fwiw.

man it must have sucked to grow up in the seventies

Peak value: Bowie by sizable margin
Career value: McCartney by a hair
voting Bowie

http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/bowie-hair.gif

Changesbowie

Funny, I remember being in the shop with my mum and pocket money, pondering between "Life on Mars" with the pic cover, and "Live and let die", I was definitely prompted towards Macca by mother.

I mean, I did like the record, (preferred the b-side), and I did get that single+pic about 10 years ago in a boot sale.

It didn't suck to grow up in the seventies - at least in the U.S., but it was frustrating for people coming out of the sixties and the rock and roll era - the excitement of new 45's to buy and play - to not hear all of the excellent black artists who were around back then. The funk records were getting the shaft. Bowie would come out with something and the radio would play it just enough for you to form a lasting memory. Then he'd be forgotten and come back again with something very different, like an uncle you'd see only a couple of years. For a kid fed up with the whiteness of rock music it was exciting, in a way those other white cats weren't. Plus conservative people hated him....reason to stay up and watch him on TV:

http://youtu.be/NkefglL9c4c

it's like he's turned into his hero/ziggy-prototype gene vincent

Peak value: Bowie by sizable margin
Career value: McCartney by a hair
voting Bowie

just want to say that giving mccartney's career the edge on account of his hair is a terrible mistake

Between those two songs, "Suffragette City." Career value, McCartney by a wide margin if the Beatles count, Bowie if they don't. Peak, McCartney by a bit if the Beatles count, Bowie if they don't.

"Martha My Dear" one of his greatest for me.

figure paul's beatles work has to count in his favor, cuz, well, he was in the beatles. wrote songs for em and everything. given that, he takes this on both peaks & career. bowie's hair is hella cool tho.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

It's Make Your Mind Up Time!

The other point:

McCartney can sing, Bowie can't.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

there's crazy talk ITT but this is special

Among the more pointless Apple and orange hair comparisons ever.

Funny I always thought Bowie over-sang on everything. Loves some vibrato.

Love Bowie, his terrible singing has nothing to do with it.

would any of bowie's major records be improved by better singing?

these days I entertain the idea of Ian Hunter singing the Ziggy tunes.

Dylan often wrote terrible lyrics, sometimes in the same song. Don't see the big deal pointing out Bowie's schtick.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

There is definitely a story being told through these pictures:

http://i.imgur.com/lhoKEHw.png

http://i.imgur.com/BpjqoDS.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/pNkVSya.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/WnXWl6S.jpg

1973, 1985, 1995, 1999?

McCartney is my favourite Beatle and I still hate his guts
Ooh you wrote a bassline
Blackbird is tight, every other song a negative sum
Bowie the best argument in history for magic > chops

Are those the captions for the four pics?

about flippin' time