Paul McCartney made his reputation on songs like this, and he knew well enough what some people thought of him for it. There’s nothing like a born optimist’s good cheer to grate on the nerves of the cynical. I guess the same people who felt ready to drop-kick Tiny Tim also are also the ones who want to punch Paul McCartney. Who does he think he is, with his unshakable faith in goodness and love? Well, Paul McCartney wasn’t so out to the heart of the country that he didn’t hear his own best friends calling him mawkish and shallow. His response showed that kindness was the best clap-back. (And success.) In his usual mild-mannered tone, he asked, what’s wrong with silly love songs? Really, though, what is it about other people’s happiness that irritates you so much? Obviously, happiness without a heaping downside of misery – even the outward appearance of it – is irritating to us angry cynical people because it’s unattainable to us personally and we think that anyone who says they’ve attained it should get some kind of cosmic comeuppance for their hubris. Paul McCartney irritates the fuck out of cynics because he appears to genuinely be the kind of person who sees sunshine and rainbows wherever he goes. And he makes more money than God rubbing everyone’s noses in positivity. But, as he states, in the most tuneful way possible, there’s nothing wrong with that. Silly love songs make people happy. And even the most cynical bastards among us – the ones who gripe that the idea of romantic love is nothing more than a conspiracy designed to make people tolerate each other’s company just long enough to make a baby and keep it alive until it learns how to walk – sometimes find themselves right in it, and all of their intellectual posturing goes straight out the window, and suddenly it isn’t so silly after all. Paul McCartney is really on to something here, and we should all actually make an effort to follow his lead on it.
