Throughout his career, Paul McCartney has created close to 700 songs. While hundreds of these have wormed their way into the hearts of millions and become part of the broader culture, not even McCartney can boast a 100 per cent hit rate when it comes to the art of songwriting.
Although he struck perfection many times with John Lennon in The Beatles as well as in his solo career or with Wings, McCartney occasionally misses the target. More often than not, these unsatisfactory efforts never escape the confines of the studio, and the former Beatle manages to thwart the creation before sharing it with the world.
Another important factor is his ability to surround himself with like-minded musicians, who will tell him if a song isn’t up to standards. However, in one instance, McCartney should have trusted his gut rather than being told by a colleague that a song he felt was a stroke of genius when he knew from the start that it was substandard.
While artists are usually their harshest critics and can often hate songs that go on to become their most successful hits, such as Nirvana with ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, these are typically exceptions to the rule. If a songwriter isn’t content with their creation, it shouldn’t deserve a place on an album for the public to spend money on and consume.
If only McCartney had listened to his own advice, he would have refrained from including ‘Bip Bop’ on Wings’ 1971 album, Wild Life, which he later described as the worst song he’d ever written. At the time, McCartney was still getting accustomed to working in a new environment and relishing the chance to experiment in uncharted territory, but with this song, with hindsight, he needed somebody to reign him in.
Musically, ‘Bip Bop’ is an enjoyable way to spend four minutes. Still, there’s no deep meaning to mine from the creation, and the nonsensical nature of the lyrics makes The Beatles’ ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ seem like Leonard Cohen in comparison.
Although ‘Bip Bop’ is not deemed a cult classic in the McCartney fan community, nobody is more scathing about the song than him. When asked about his worst song during a 2015 interview with Q Magazine, he replied, “Bip Bop [from’71’s Wild Life]. The lyrics are fucking awful”.
After reciting a selection of the track’s most cringe-inducing lyrics, he explained how it was selected as an album track despite his better judgement, revealing, “(Producer) Trevor Horn told me, ‘That’s one of my favourites’. I can’t hate it that much, can I? There must have been a reason I liked it in the first place.”
In his book, The Lyrics: 1956 to Present, McCartney revealed that after initially writing ‘Bip Bop’ he became “very down” about the track and was willing to throw it on the scrap heap before Horn’s comments.
By 1989, McCartney had begun to see ‘Bip Bop’ as the nadir of his songwriting and felt that it represented a stark contrast from the heights he hit with The Beatles. He explained in Paul Du Noyer’s book, Conversations with McCartney: “That’s my theory, that in years to come, people may actually look at all my work rather than the context of it following the Beatles. That’s the danger, as it came from ‘Here, There And Everywhere’, ‘Yesterday’, ‘Fool On The Hill’, to ‘Bip Bop’, which is such an inconsequential little song.”
The former Beatle then went a step further in his damning analysis of the Wings track by adding, “I’ve always hated that song.”
Ultimately, ‘Bip Bop’ is a regretful part of McCartney’s back catalogue, and the fact that he’s been haunted by this composition for five decades shows that he views it as an albatross around his neck. However, while it’s not up to McCartney’s ultra-high songwriting standards, it’s an inoffensive, mediocre ditty, and most artists have crafted much worse during their careers.
