Even decades after releasing some songs, Paul McCartney sees fans poring over the lyrics, searching for meaning. John Lennon once said this was fruitless on some Beatles songs, as he wrote lines to purposely confuse fans. According to McCartney, fans might find themselves in a similar situation with his solo work. He said that some of the lyrics in one song had no meaning behind them.
Paul McCartney said the lyrics to 1 song had little meaning behind them
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In 1971, McCartney released Ram, his second post-Beatles album. Though the album initially received a poor critical reception, many have reviewed it significantly more favorably in retrospect. As fans continue to listen to the album, they’ve wondered what some of the whimsical, seemingly meaningless lyrics mean.
In the song “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey,” which has recently received an increase in interest on social media, McCartney sings “the butter wouldn’t melt so I put it in the pie.”
“No, there’s no meaning behind it. Because I like surrealist art, I also like surrealist words,” he said, on his official website. “A great example of this is Lewis Carroll writing Alice in Wonderland – it’s a crazy thing, you’ve got a cat sitting in a tree that grins and talks, and you’ve got Alice falling down a hole and meeting the red queen, and so on.”
He said that a great joy of songwriting for him was the ability to create surrealist imagery.
“I’d always liked writing love songs, ballads, and rock ‘n’ roll songs, but then one of my other little side interests was to invent surrealist stuff. Admiral Halsey was someone I’d read about – he’s a character from American history – and I just liked the name,” he said. “I was playing around with that and making up a fictional story, and I just ran into the words ‘and butter pie’. Well, there’s no such thing as a butter pie, that I’ve ever heard of anyway. So, it was a surrealist image, like in surreal art where you have a thing called a ‘hair cup’, which is just a cup that’s made out of fur. You wouldn’t think to drink from it, it’d be disgusting, but as an image it’s interesting and shocking. ‘Butter pie’ is that kind of equivalent, but in a song.”
Paul McCartney said his lyrics impacted the way he sang a song
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McCartney said that part of the fun of writing surrealist lyrics was that he then could sing the song more playfully.
“It also depends on how seriously you want to sing a song,” he wrote. “If the lyrics are a bit zany then you end up having fun with the vocal, like you’re a character.”
He shared where he gained inspiration to take these kinds of creative risks.
“I’m inspired by people like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, who did a song called ‘I Put A Spell On You’. When I first heard it I couldn’t believe the way he was using his voice, I thought, ‘wow, this guy is singing far out’!” he said. “‘Monkberry Moon Delight’ was definitely influenced by ‘Put A Spell On You’, because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a light relief from the serious world.”
His Beatles bandmates were not fond of the album
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When McCartney released Ram, he was in the middle of a legal battle with his former Beatles bandmates. They were not happy with him, and made this clear in the way they spoke about his solo work.
“I feel sad with Paul’s albums because I believe he’s a great artist, incredibly creative, incredibly clever but he disappoints me on his albums,” Starr said in The Beatles Diary Vol. 2, adding, “I don’t think there’s one tune on the last one Ram … I just feel he’s wasted his time, it’s just the way I feel … he seems to be going strange.”
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Lennon and George Harrison felt similarly.
