Taking Sides: Cole Porter vs Paul McCartney

Other Choices Please !!?
Rodgers, Coward, Merrit, Cohen, Lennon, Dylan , Sondheim for starters?
Fuck id take Billy Bragg or Ludon Wainwright over the two mentioned.

yeah, bily bragg and ludon wainwright piss over them both, tho if i had to choose, it would be cole porter cos he never posed on an album coer with sheep or let linda mcartney play keyboards

Cole Porter never (to my knowledge) wrote anything as bad as "She's Leaving Home" or "Hello Goodbye"

There is absolutely no contest; Porter shits all over McCartney from a great height.

Sondheim and Bernstein are better than both of them, though.

Cole Porter's bass playing = even worse than his Little Richard impression

Well Mark, obviously you never saw Cole Porter and Stanley Clarke 'duel' during the fusion daze, if Jaco had been there it would've been the best night ever

McCartney can't even climb into the ring with Porter.

>>> Rodgers, Coward, Merrit, Cohen, Lennon, Dylan , Sondheim for starters? Fuck id take Billy Bragg or Ludon Wainwright over the two mentioned.

These are all good - except for Cohen. But I'm not sure that any of them beat BOTH CP and Macca for me. Much as I love Bragg, he certainly can't get in this ring.

I'm surprised at the ride Macca is getting here, but perhaps I shouldn't be. I'm also surprised at how people prefer eg Sondheim to Porter. They might be right. I don't know enough SS.

I want to know what Tom E thinks. I hope his view is not 'Neither, yawn'.

Either, yawn.

OK, seriously? I don't know enough Cole Porter to comment. Or rather I know a lot of songs from CP's 'era' but not which ones are his. Can anyone recommend a good introduction?

I think you might be overrating McCartney, though, Pinefox. I would have to bow to you on the technical elements of songwriting but very little of his songs thrill or move me. So I suspect I'd end up with Cole Porter anyhow.

The original question sounds like something Paddy McAloon would dream up -- and then want serious answers about. ARGH!

A good Porter intro is Ella Fitzgerald sings the CP Songbook. Most of his famous (and good) stuff w/ an A+ singer and arrangements.

Pinefox, I think there's some kind of zoning regulations restricting those two from being mentioned in the same sentence. McCartney trawls through Porter's trash cans. But I'm also in the sondheim uber alles camp.

Oops

I don't get it...As I assume most of you are British, I can only conclude that the anti-Paul sentiment runs even deeper on your shores than it does here. Hmmm..."I've Just Seen a Face," "Penny Lane," "I'm Looking Through You," "She's a Woman," "All My Loving," "Things We Said Today," "For No One," "Here, There, Everywhere"--Is Cole Porter really even in this league? I suppose if you wanted to you could argue that McCartney wrote more "silly love songs" in his career (though I hasten to see what's so silly about love songs anyway) (except for ones *called* "Silly Love Songs"), but weren't silly (albeit cleverly-silly) love songs ALL Porter ever wrote?

And how many of Cole Porter's birds and bees and educated fleas ever did it in the road?

Scott, the McC. Beatles songs you mention would hold up pretty well against most songwriters, but not Porter. I mean, the melody to "I Love Paris" alone squashes anything he did. And lyrically you can't even begin to compare the two. I can only assume your comment was made in conditions of gross ignorance re: Porter. "Here, There, & Everywhere" vs. "Night and Day"? PHHHHTTT!

And how many of Cole Porter's birds and bees and educated fleas ever did it in the road?

Precisely! A dull blues pastiche (which is also the weakest thing on the White Album) does not equal one of the wittiest, most immortal songs of the 20c. Stephen Merritt said it best- it's impossible to parody Porter. McC. is all-too-easily parodied, if not actually a parody himself. (btw, I'm American).

I retract that "gross ignorance" comment. Snobishness does not fit me well...

Search: CP's "Let's Misbehave". Lyrically tops, magnificently dirty. And even better, if anything, is the skittering fetching rhyhthm of "You've Got That Thing".

cole porter = emotionally evasive
mccartney = less so

Real people = emotionally evasive.

Well I am.

Maybe Cole Porter should have tried his hand at emo though.

If emotional sincerity was your only criterion, Jewel would have 'em both beat. The subtext of something like "Night and Day"-vaguely hinted-at obsession and longing- beat "honest" emotional evisceration any day. It's more subtle, more complex, more rewarding.

Actually, tha chzza, "gross ignorance" isn't too far off the mark, though it didn't prevent my mouse from hitting the "submit" button anyway. I have a feeling that I probably really like Cole Porter--the stuff that I know of his, I *do* like. I guess the difference for me is appreciating the craft of Porter and feeling my skin crawl when "I've Just Seen a Face" comes on. What Tom said way up there about McCartney, I'd apply to Porter: "I would have to bow to you on the technical elements of songwriting but very little of his songs thrill or move me." McCartney thrills me, but then, he always was the cute Beatle and I'm still disappointed that I'm not a teenage girl.

Oh, and yes, "Why Don't We Do it in the Road" is thoroughly lame, I know (though it did scare the hell out of me when I was a kid--I would always skip that one if my parents were in the other room, which they usually were). I was merely trying to be clever (i.e., intellectually evasive?).

"I guess the difference for me is appreciating the craft of Porter and feeling my skin crawl when 'I've Just Seen a Face' comes on."

Umm, I meant to say that I really like that song...skin-crawl was clearly the wrong phrase...

Your line was very clever. If only McCartney'd thunk of it.

WDWDIITR also freaked me out as a kid. That and Helter Skelter are testament to McCartney's ability to be overtly weird and unsettling, two things Porter rarely is.

Two words in McCartney's favour - COMING UP!

Scott Rockcritics (ROCKCRITICS!!! Fantastic name!) does well to stick up for Macca - good on you, Rocky. I don't know that I see him in exactly the same terms; I see him as much in the terms Ewing hinted (the craftsman).

I am quite prepared to allow that Porter probably beats Macca. But it's not a 4-0 walloping, more a 3-2 thriller. Both, by my lights, are fabulous and inspiring (did Tom E mean that, too, by 'either'? Yawn).

'WDWDIITR': not very good. But what about 'For No One' or 'Golden Slumbers' or - or - 'The Long And Winding Road'?

<<< OUCH! (tons of bricks tumble on top of the Pinefox for latest ILM heresy >>>

'Long & Winding Road' - there's an OK song in there, whimpering to get out. Genii should not meet.

[stands on top of pile of bricks. Begins to jump up and down]

'Genii' = Forest Gump's girlfriend?

*winces in pain*

I like them both, but comparison is hard, and the question is intriguing and baffling:
(1) Almost all my favorite "McCartney" songs were written in the three-year-period 1963-1965 in full collaboration with Lennon, both words and music. I'd pick Lennon as the greater talent, but given that almost all my favorite Lennon songs were written in the same three-year period, and were the same songs, there's no good way to disentangle Lennon's contributions from McCartney's. (And I don't think Lennon's and McCartney's post-'67 work is much of a guide here.) Cole Porter, on the other hand, was writing great songs for decades.
(2) Apples and oranges: songwriters Lennon & McCartney were creating raw material for Beatles records, whereas Porter was writing songs to be performed by many different performers in diverse environments, including shows and movies.
(3) Porter, you only get clobbered by the acknowledged "classics," whereas the Beatles are such objects of worship that you still get inundated by the whole soup and can't evade dreck like "The Fool on the Hill" and "All You Need Is Love" (or anyway I couldn't, growing up with them).
(4) The Beatles' "Hey Bulldog" is better than Cole Porter's "Bulldog, Bulldog, Bow Wow Wow."
(5) Porter: melodies underrated.
Beatles: early lyrics underrated.
(6) Porter was far more skilled than the Beatles at incorporating "Eastern" elements into the music (albeit from an East that was Eastern European rather than Indian).
(7) The Beatles when good could be more emotionally direct in their lyrics but were also vastly, vastly, vastly more complex in their psychology, were much better craftsmen when it came to setting forth a scene and a situation, were much better at suggesting complicated worlds, were more at ease making lyrics out of conversational language. E.g., "She Loves You," just some simple words of advice from a guy to his friend but, as Dave Marsh points out, with the unstated threat: "If you don't go back to her, I'm ready to take her." In "Yes It Is" the blatant red-blue wordplay ("Red is the color that will make me blue, in spite of you, it's true, yes, it is") provides cover for all sorts of emotional subtleties that would clunk if stated outright - I'm burned, I'm hurt, your full flame right off would remind me too much of her flame, but maybe I could slide into this thing with you slowly. Compare to how in "It's All Right With Me" Porter keeps jabbing you in the ribs with these subtleties.
(8) The beautiful eeriness of the melody makes the obsessive lyrics of "Night and Day" just as beautiful and eerie, rather than sappy or ridiculous.
(9) Porter's lyrics are sophisticated if you're, like, twelve years old. (Yeah, sex exists; so does prostitution.) Porter's talent is to get a simple idea and then take you to it by the scenic route - e.g., all the kicks in "I Get Kick Out of You" and all the Argentines and beans in "Let's Do It." Puns, comically tortured rhymes, raucous and exuberant wordplay - they appeal to the nine-year-old in me, actually.
(10) Porter was restricted and protected by his chosen zeitgeist. The Beatles were buoyed by theirs, but it sometimes led them over the falls. Porter never had to have a serious opinion about Chairman Mao (but if he had, surely, surely he'd have rhymed Mao with something better than "Ain't gonna make it with anyone, anyhow").
(11) Shooby doo. Yeah yeah yeah.
(12) Beatles '63-'65 (-'67, even) trounce Porter's entire career, but as I said that's apples and oranges, to compare records to songs, songs to a time and a world.

More in regard to apples and oranges: I'm suggesting that to some extent the Beatles and Porter were working a different artform. I love "You Can't Do That" and "She Loves You," but I simply don't care whether those songs could have survived treatments by Merman and Fitzgerald. On the other hand, "Yes It Is" needed a lighter touch than the Beatles gave it, and I'm sad that, say, neither the Everly Brothers nor Fred Astaire had a whack at it.

Frank K:

1. Thanks for your considered and extensive response.

2. You're the Rock Journo and I'm in scant position to argue with you.

3. Still, I'm surprised re. 'Can't separate Lennon / McCartney'. I thought it had become standard to do that.

4. FWIW I think Macca the Greater Talent than Lennon. The more I think about it, the less of Lennon's talent I see. But like I say, you're the rock journo - you know these things.

5. I don't think I think 'The Fool On The Hill' is bad. I think I think hardly any Beatles stuff is bad. Solo stuff = another matter of course.

6. Aren't you (and everyone) overrating 'Night & Day', and esp. these 'Eastern elements'?

7. But like I say - I enjoyed reading your views.

Great post Frank. I'm gonna pick at a couple things, however. (pick pick)

4)Yes, ha ha. But as I pointed out above, Porter's romantic obsessiveness trounces anything attempted by McCartney. Macca comes off as someone who always got what he wanted, there's no tension in "H,T, & E". Porter's homosexuality and how it informed his music (esp. given restricted social parameters) is fascinating.

9) I take exception to this one. I only started listening to Porter last year (at 24) and find a lyrical wit and complexity I'd rarely found in any other pop music, even the Beatles. Keats he's not, and I'll admit his is not psychologically the most complex stuff ever, but that's not necessarily what I look for in pop. As to the Beatles being "psychologically complex", I think this is a case of too much conferred value w/o the hard textual evidence to back it up, both on your part and Marsh's. It's a case of being moved by something (melody, rhythm, whatever) not necessarily related to the lyrics, but looking for it in them, since that's what is supposed to make pop respectable (cf. Dylan, etc. I remember watching an old film of a middle aged academic type reading the lyrics to "Be Bop A Lula" in a flat monotone while the audience of self-congratulatory lits laughed their tweed coats off. This is missing the point entirely, obviously). Is there more "depth" to the Beatles' simple teenage angst lyrics than the Crystals? The Monkees? Some random one-hit wonder I've forgotten about? I doubt it.

12) Ho, boy. But as you said, apples and oranges. Cheers.

And, no offence, but I think deferring to someone's opinion 'cause they're a rock journo is absurd.

But you think that most of my views are absurd anyway, thus far.

I don't disagree with you about lyrics / the point of pop / etc, by the way. I said as much in a wee thingy I wrote for Stevie T last century.

Is there more "depth" to the Beatles' simple teenage angst lyrics than the Crystals? The Monkees?

No, but there is a world of potential "depth" in most simple teenage angst lyrics, I think.

I stand 90% with Frank on this (somewhat surprisingly, given that our musical tastes are so often at odds). Specifically, 1) the best McC was the collaborative Lennon-McCartney, and 1963-1965 will never be matched. 2) The music was critical to the success of the songs. With the best songs, the lyrics are not meant to stand alone (notwithstanding McC's recent book of poetry) and, conversely, neither is the music. 3) Porter's wit (which I like a great deal, regardless of which age I might pretend to be at any given instant) also could cover deeper emotions and conflicts; don't let the wit stop you from looking (or feeling) more deeply. He is in this way like Lewis Carroll, whose wit may obscure the deeper philosophical puzzles he was setting forth. Carroll was perhaps the master, though. 4) Applesauce and miles-per-hour; Porter and Lennon-McC are not comparable in some basic ways. For example, Porter's music was not made for rocking, but some Lennon-McC must assuredly rocks. 5)I was reminded again how good Porter is when I saw Kiss Me, Kate, a few weeks ago (national tour of the Broadway revival). It was great fun -- better than I expected, even though I grew up a fan of the original cast recording. Among other things, Porter's breadth and variety may even have surpassed Lennon-McC. 6) The best L-McC can live forever, while the best Porter may go in and out of style. But if it fades, it will likely be rediscoverd by some future antiquarians, who will fall in love with it. 7) As long as we are not limited to taking sides, we really need to include Gilbert and Sullivan, Rodgers and Hammerstein, the Ramones, Irving Berlin, Dylan, and many others who put it all together in their best work. 8) Please ignore everyone's worst work. 9) If only the Beach Boys could have improved their lyrics from D+ to B-, they could have been even greater than they were.

1. KOGAN IN CLONE SHOCKER!!!

2. I don't think anyone is seriously saying 'Look at the lyrics in isolation'. I think it is probably broadly understood that pop lyrics work in a particular way, with music etc etc. Well, it 'is' by me, anyway.

3. OK, "let's not exclude Dylan et al..." - but jeezus christ, where will this end?? Taking Sides is A v B! If the Ramones crash the party, whose side are they going to be on? And more to the point, will there be enough beer to go round, and where the hell are they going to sleep?

The best L-McC can live forever, while the best Porter may go in and out of style.

Everything goes in and out of style. L-Mc haven't yet because they are a big part of the foundation upon which today's popular music still rests. But I don't see any reason why rock n' roll will one day go out of fashion and they'll be seen in the same light Porter is now: as products of an age. In fact, what got me listening to Porter in the first place was a personal frustration with how samey most rock music is.

there is a world of potential "depth" in most simple teenage angst lyrics, I think

Sure, but this opens up the thorny issue of Value. What makes something valuable? Take a dime store crucifix w/ a fifty cent price tag. Not very valuable, right? But put it behind a jar of urine, photograph it and it becomes a statement on the durability of religious faith. It takes on personal value. It also becomes part of the art market, which confers on it a monetary and cultural value. Suddenly this fifty cent mass-produced trinket's worth millions. I see much the same phenomenon happening re: pop music lyrics. I happen to value witty wordplay more than sincere plainspoken angst. So by my standards Porter is more valuable, but my standards are hardly universal. I'd be willing to defend them, but that's not the same as excluding other viewpoints. This is all a really long way of saying "I basically see your point but don't share your opinion so I'm trying to put things in context."

Pinefox: I retract the flippancy of my first post. I think it was a great question, as you can see by how many times I've posted. So, no, I don't think your views are absurd. I like the things you have to say.

You're the Rock Journo and I'm in scant position to argue with you.

I gather that you assume all Rock Journos are drunks. Good policy never to argue with drunks.

(Blimey, I've mentioned my sister often enuff: never thought of bringing her here to BACK ME UP!!)

(which she certainly wouldn't, come to think of it: hi richard!!)