I love Paul McCartney. I am going to say this again, one more time, to remind you that I love Paul McCartney. But when he headlined Glastonbury in 2022 and played ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ as his 23rd song of the night, my loyalty was tested.
And this is coming from a McCartney fan who wholeheartedly buys into his silliness. In fact, I even wrote an article expressing my guilt-ridden love for his overly corny song ‘Silly Love Songs’. So as I stood there on that Saturday night, with my knees slowly failing me and my delirium being fuelled by another pint of warm beer, I welcomed the opportunity to bathe in Macca’s playfulness.
But as the setlist dragged on, and the charm of seeing our greatest musician play live disintegrated into fatigue, sparked by what felt like a never-ending setlist, I knew the childlike, nonsensical song from The White Album wouldn’t help. Because, despite my bias, it is undoubtedly one of Macca’s worst songs, and if anything, titled the first domino in an effect that would eventually end in The Beatles’ break-up.
At its worst, it almost sounds like a song written to test The Beatles’ cultural immortality. A game McCartney is playing with us to see how far we will go in labelling the band pioneers, and if there is ever a line to be drawn in terms of criticism.
It was a bridge too far for the rest of the band, who saw through the nonsense. John Lennon, simply labelled it “granny shit”, before going “ballistic” at his songwriter for even penning such a track.
“John Lennon came to the session really stoned, totally out of it on something or other, and he [McCartney] said, ‘All right, we’re gonna do ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’,” recalled Richard Lush, the band’s engineer at the time. In response to Macca’s insistence on writing such a ridiculous song, Lennon began to express his anger through the instrument. His steely gaze finally gave way to physicality, as he “went straight to the piano and smashed the keys with an almighty amount of volume, twice the speed of how they’d done it before, and said, ‘This is it! Come on! He was really aggravated”.
It wasn’t just Lennon. George Harrison later took a swipe at the song in his track ‘Savoy Truffle’ and essentially confirmed that this number was the thorn that splintered the group into four. McCartney fans can centre their rebuttal in tracks like ‘Octopus’ Garden’ or ‘I Am The Walrus’ as equally as irreverent, but the truth is those songs are built on a melodic structure with some genuine merit. ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ just sounded like playground nonsense that hadn’t gone through any creative filtration, on the proviso that everything they wrote could turn into gold.
The annoying part is, McCartney’s vocals actually sound great on the record. So it’s screaming out for some sort of sonic segue or breakdown that breaks away from that awful, unrelenting piano melody. I’ve always been team McCartney, when pressed to make a decision, but with every listen of this song, I question my allegiance.
