Ranking Paul's Studio Albums | Page 6 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Musketeer Gripweed.  Points well taken. So I’ll contribute now to the content of the actual thread.  My favorite of Paul’s post-Beatles studio albums:

I don’t own them all in their entirety, though I have a song or two from all of them.  I’ll only rank the albums I own. 

1. Ram . In my opinion the best post-Beatles album.  Plastic Ono Band and ATMP are strong contenders as well; both are fabulous.  But no other post-Beatles album–and very few Beatles albums–captures the wild musical diversity and musical richness of songs that one finds in Ram .   In the ending few measures of Dear Boy Paul channels ol’ J.S. Bach.  

2.  Band On The Run .  

3. Tug Of War .  One of the first ten albums i ever owned.  Some of his best melodies.  (Can you tell I’m a melody guy more than a lyric guy?) Tug Of War and Wanderlust are fabulous.  

4.  New.  Paul gets unusually personal in Early Days .  A nice rare touch.  

5. Electric Arguments.  Again, we see a kind of musical diversity of song that isn’t simply unique to Paul compared to his fellow Beatles but is virtually unique in the music world.  

6. Flaming Pie . 

7.  Chaos and Creation.  It feels an injustice to rank Chaos and Creation number 7.  Jenny Wren is as good as anything he’s ever done. 

8. Venus And Mars .  A really fun album.  The first time I heard Magneto and Titanium Man I thought that, yes, Paul deserves every invective hurled his way.  What a ridiculous song. Childish.  Why doesn’t Paul grow up?  But then I found myself humming it to myself and wanting to hear it again.  And I did.  Over and again.  So there you have Paul in a nutshell.  The guy isn’t a philosopher; let’s be honest.  He’s rarely profound.  Lyrically he’s not John or George (or a thousand other songwriters), which is not to say he can’t write the occasional heartfelt or thought-provoking lyric.  But what the guy can do is write melodies and hooks like no one since–who?–Schubert perhaps.  

9.   Flowers In The Dirt .

10. McCartney.  Plenty of good, bad, and ugly–all.  But on balance the good easily outweighs the bad for me. 

11.  Memory almost Full.  This album seems a little unrealized to me.  Lots of good moments. A couple of terrific songs.  (My fave is “That was me.”) But for whatever reason it doesn’t work as an album for me as fully as I think it could for reasons I can’t quite articulate. I don’t know what’s missing, exactly. 

12. Back To The Egg .  

13.  London Town . 

14. Choba B CCP

A few gratuitous comments.  I don’t know who’s more talented or the better song-writer, John or Paul.  It’s not a competition, though I find myself stupidly thinking along these lines.  Why?  When I was younger I never did this.  I loved The Beatles.  I loved John.  I loved Paul.  I loved George and Ringo.  I didn’t feel the need to parse out their every contribution and to weigh and evaluate their exact contributions–as though musical appreciation is a science. I think on balance it’s a little ridiculous when I find myself doing that.  So I try to avoid “Who’s better” thinking.  But I think a comparison along different lines is worth pursuing.  John said that for him writing every song was “torture.”   We know that he could, if necessary, write a song overnight. (Help . A Hard Day’s Night .)  But one does not gather that melodies were floating through his brain 24/7 whether he wanted them to or not.  In contrast, Paul always speaks of songs as coming to him effortlessly.  He finds songwriting easy.  Melodies come to him in his sleep.   I wonder whether that helps explain some differences between the two songwriters.  John really worked at his songs–his chords are a little more unexpected and unusual; his lyrics a little more meaningful.  He played with his guitar and piano until he found an interesting sound.   In contrast, Paul sort of cranks out songs whenever he wants.  Aaron Copland said that melody was a gift from the gods; melodies come when they do.  If you think of melody as the top line playable with one finger on the piano, I think Paul’s melodies truly are (taken as a body of work) the greatest in the modern era.   

John has his shares of fabulous melodies.  Yes, of course.  And Paul’s chord choices are at times surprising, his lyrics intriguing.  But they each had their respective strengths.  And I wonder finally whether the very ease at which melodies come to Paul sometimes allow him to create songs that might have shown more soul were he forced to struggle a bit more with their creation.  Example:  “So Bad.”   Taken solely as a melody in the manner noted above, “So Bad” is really beautiful. But the song itself is … well, it depends on one’s perspective, I suppose.  I like the melody enough to like the song, but I can easily understand how someone might (rightly) think it no better than a silly love song.