Paul McCartney Sings “My Brave Face”

Listen to this track by one-time Beatles bassist turned pop songwriting elder statesman Paul McCartney. It’s “My Brave Face”, a smash radio single as taken from his 1989 record Flowers in the Dirt. That album saw McCartney returning from a wilderness period of flagging chart results and back into the top twenty again. This was in part thanks to a return to his celebrated Beatle-y sound which for some years he’d mostly avoided in favour of synths and big Eighties-style production. Although McCartney would score hits after this, “My Brave Face” resulted in the last single by a former Beatle as a solo artist to crack the Billboard Hot 100 top 40.

One of the signs that McCartney had returned to his Beatle sounds around this time was in his use of his iconic Höfner bass again. While in Wings in the 1970s, McCartney mostly stuck with Yamaha or Rickenbacker basses for a brawnier rock and R&B sound suitable for big Seventies-style arena shows. Here on “My Brave Face”, his bass playing is lighter and poppier although no less intricate and appealing. The album’s overall sound follows suit, influenced by McCartney’s selection of well-known co-producers. This cut features the work of Mitchell Froom, recognized at the time for his sterling work with registered McCartney-and-Beatles appreciators Crowded House, and later with Elvis Costello; this song’s co-writer.

One of the roles Costello played on this particular song was as an influence to steer it in a more Fab direction, melodically speaking. As broad as his musical vocabulary and reach was becoming by the end of the 1980s, Costello loved The Beatles as much as any of us do, and still does. Use of the Höfner bass on initial recording sessions was purportedly at Costello’s prompting, possibly in the hopes that such an emblematic instrument might help lead them down some familiar sonic avenues when it came time to lay down the track. McCartney knew the score as well as anyone and leaned into it.

Again, it was easy to assume that the musical sunniness heard in this song is all McCartney, and that the downcast lyrics were Costello’s. But, not so! And what of the lyrics to this song, anyway? On the surface, it seems like a standard my baby left me song. But amid all of the musical effervescence of chiming guitars and tight harmonies, the story turns out to be far more complicated. It hints that the former lover’s departure was justified even if her reasons for leaving aren’t really the point. Instead, the focus is on the narrator’s capacity, or lack thereof, to emotionally manage the situation on his own, which is not going well by the time the story begins.

“I’ve been living a lie
Unaccustomed as I am
To the work of a housewife
I’ve been breaking up dirty dishes and throwing them away.
Ever since you left I have been trying to
Compose a ‘baby will you please come home’ note meant for you.
As I clear away another untouched TV dinner from the table
I laid for two …”

– “My Brave Face”, Paul McCartney

This isn’t because of the narrator’s seemingly antiquated view of who’s responsible for household chores or his inability to manage them. It’s more to do with locked up emotions and the limited capacity to express them. These go along with repressing and denying feelings for appearances sake. In this, “My Brave Face” is a real typical guy song, trained as many of us are in acts of emotional disconnection so that we can appear strong even in our weakest moments. In these kinds of situations, brave faces are more important than examined feelings.

This song’s narrator indulges in these same performances of the brave soldier that so many guys feel are necessary to overcome sadness and loneliness. Here, this comes at the cost of knowing what’s really going on in his own heart, with unexamined feelings that keep returning him to the place of heartbreak and unable to move on. He hits the town, does the rounds, and lives a lie without the emotional wherewithal to unpack just what’s happening to him and why, kicking him back to square one again in an endless, heartbreaking loop.

This very relatable tension and sense of the unresolved is why “My Brave Face” works so well as a pop song. Against a poptastic sound that puts a very brave face on a harrowing story, “My Brave Face” is about complex emotions and how disorienting and debilitating they can be even as everything seems sunny and bright on the surface.

As far as Paul McCartney’s ability to write these kinds of stories in his lyrics, this was not new thematic territory for him. In fact, “My Brave Face” could easily be a sequel song to The Beatles’ “For No One”; another tale of a love gone south for emotionally complex reasons. In that song, a woman gains clarity on what she wants and doesn’t want in her relationship, ultimately feeling the need to move on. “My Brave Face” provides a new angle to the story from the perspective of the one she leaves behind. This is a man who has resolved not to change a single thing for sentimental reasons without the awareness that change is as necessary for him as it is to the woman who’s left him.

“My Brave Face” remains to be one of McCartney’s best songs and one that showcases so many of his strengths as a songwriter and musician. Even in his earliest days, he was the one in The Beatles who was the most interested in telling stories about well-drawn characters and their inner lives. This one is a continuation in that tradition. Along with all the jangly guitars, soaring harmonies, and aural Sixties-inspired sunshine, this was another sign of Macca’s return to Fab form that’s just as significant as his reunion with his iconic Höfner bass guitar.

And speaking of reunions with McCartney’s Höfner bass guitar, the instrument he used during his early days at the Cavern Club and on the first two Beatles albums was returned to him last year. That original bass guitar he bought in Hamburg was relegated to back-up bass status by 1963 in favour of other Höfner instruments. It was stolen in 1972 from the back of a van in London. But the bass was recently recovered thanks to the efforts of The Lost Bass Project. It’s almost like the video for “My Brave Face” in which a collector is arrested for stealing that instrument, among other McCartney artifacts, was resolved in real life!

Paul McCartney is an active songwriter and performer today. You can catch up to his more recent movements at paulmccartney.com.

For more on McCartney’s Flowers in the Dirt album, check out this song-by-song reflection from the man himself, courtesy of People Magazine of all sources.

And to go even further into his catalogue of material, here’s a list of 20 great Paul McCartney songs from his Fab days to the 21st century.

Enjoy!

#80sMusic #bassGuitar #PaulMcCartney #songsAboutBreakingUp #storySongs

Listen to this track by world renowned and one-time Star Wars universe-adjacent singer-songwriter Paul Simon. It’s “Hearts and Bones”, the title track from his 1983 album, his sixth record as a solo artist. The record was once slated as a new Simon & Garfunkel record, conceived in part after the duo’s successful 1981-83 reunion tour. But soon enough, Simon found himself with a new solo project on his hands instead, deciding that his new songs were far too personal to share with his former musical partner. Simon also realized that their ways of working on new material as a duo in the studio were no longer compatible. This was purportedly much to Garfunkel’s great chagrin, and everyone’s, given the hit this album would have been as a reunion record.

In some ways though, the weight must have been off Simon’s shoulders not to have to follow up 1970’s iconic Bridge Over Troubled Water. Yet in another sense, following 1980’s One Trick Pony must have been a significant source of pressure, with the associated movie project being something of a commercial disappointment despite the album producing a big hit single. In any case, the working title for the record Think Too Much may have been come by pretty honestly as Simon found himself in the middle of a productive but personally taxing point in his career.

The more insular and less pop craftsman-like nature of the material on the re-christened Hearts and Bones album certainly is something of a departure as Simon explores deeper emotional territories in a more personal way than ever before. This title track is one of the finest examples of that as a little movie about how complicated love can be and how ready or not we are in our hearts and bones to sustain it. But what is meant by the hearts and bones in the title, and what does it say about the way human beings experience each other in the arc of a love affair?

In 1977, Paul Simon met actor Carrie Fisher; she of George Lucas’ beloved series of space fantasy films who would reveal herself to be a gifted novelist and memoirist, film script doctor, and acerbic wit in her own right. After years in an on and off courtship characterized by clashing personalities that still seemed to share an enduring affinity, they married in 1983. That was the year this record came out and while Simon was still on tour with Garfunkel. It was an outrageous act even to Simon, evidently.

As for the music to go along with this fractious and fraught love story, listeners were treated and/or surprised by a more understated Paul Simon sound rooted in a kind of Africanized worldbeat pulse. Sonically speaking, this musical direction and this song in particular cleared the way for a more celebrated song that touched on the emotional impact of a troubled marriage: “Graceland”. Three years later, that single featured “Hearts and Bones” as its B-side. Appropriately enough, its natural thematic and musical fit makes it easy to think that “Graceland” is something of a spiritual sequel to this earlier song. Both are a part of the same story with 1991’s “She Moves On” being the final chapter in the trilogy.

In the meantime, “Hearts and Bones” is about how two people individually understand their marital union and about what arises out of the differences between their two perspectives. It is about the need and the desire to truly connect with that other person, but with a great gulf that makes the effort into one that’s difficult to overcome.

Two people were married
The act was outrageous
The bride was contagious
She burned like a bride
These events may have had some effect
On the man with the girl by his side

– “Hearts and Bones”, Paul Simon

The lines are revealing of Simon’s perspective as a man who indeed thinks too much, possibly at the cost of his emotional availability even on the most joyous of occasions. This helps to lay out the central dichotomy in this song, which concerns the divide between what others want from us in a loving relationship versus how well equipped we are to deliver it. The hearts to love each other are there. But the very bones of our being set so firmly in place often stop us from being what a lover needs us to be; “why can’t you love me for who I am, where I am?” “He said: that’s not the way the world is, baby. This is how I love you, baby.”

These stark personal revelations reflect the songwriter’s plight as he faces up to his own limitations when it comes to loving another person. In this, Simon was quite right about the album he was making while it was still a proposed Simon & Garfunkel comeback record; that this was a statement from an artist at a personal crossroads, confronting those limitations and seeing how they play out in a very important relationship. True to that, Simon openly wrestles with the angel here, cherishing the arc of a love affair while also acknowledging it as a source of turmoil.

Such is often the nature of love and the unions its inspires. Despite it all, the love itself is still there, even long after two people have taken entirely separate paths. We treasure that love and agonize over it all at once. That’s why love is so messy so much of the time. In our hearts and bones, we know that sometimes its bigger than any two people can contain or wholly define as good or bad, especially when sometimes it’s both.

Paul Simon is an active songwriter today, still creating work that challenges and delights listeners. You can catch up to his recent activities and learn more about his influential career as a songwriter at paulsimon.com.

Also, read this article about Paul Simon’s 12-year on-off relationship with Carrie Fisher that reveals further details only hinted at in this song.

Enjoy!

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#80sMusic #LoveSongs #PaulSimon #singerSongwriters #songsAboutBreakingUp