Paul McCartney wrote over a thousand songs over the course of his career, building one of the most important catalogs in the history of pop music. Yet, even one of the greatest authors of all time has never hidden the fact that he has made some mistakes. Indeed, there is a song that he unhesitatingly considers the worst he has ever written.
It is “Bip Bop”, the second song from “Wild Life”, Wings' debut album released in 1971. It was also the first song recorded for the album, on July 24, 1971, and one of the last to be mixed, on October 17 of the same year. Curiously it was recorded in mono. In addition to the complete version of the band, a short instrumental and acoustic recording entitled “Bip Bop Link” also appears on the album, located in the final part of the album.
After the dissolution of the Beatles, McCartney could have lived on an income thanks to the repertoire already built. Instead he chose to start over with Wings, experimenting with new ideas and new languages. Precisely in that transition phase “Bip Bop” was born, an essential song, built on a groove minimal and on a deliberately childish text.
Talking about its genesis, McCartney explained: “I was just playing the guitar and the bass string, tapping on it, a very simple thing, almost stripped down blues. We were very interested in playing robust music, music that didn't necessarily want to say anything. We were never too serious – we just liked to have a bit of fun.”
On another occasion he added: “'Bip Bop' is just a song I wrote. It's the one our little girl likes. She knows it and it's easy to sing. It could have been called 'Flip Flop,' you know? It could have been anything, but instead it became 'Bip Bop.'”
Despite its curious genesis, the song never became a cult even among McCartney's fans, and over the years its author came to openly disown it. Interviewed by Q Magazine in 2015 and asked to name the worst song of his career, he replied without hesitation: “Bip Bop”. Then he added: “The lyrics are fucking awful.” After quoting some of the song's most embarrassing lines, McCartney explained that he had never been able to stand the words since the moment of composition. However, he said that producer Trevor Horn (Buggles) had surprised him by confessing: “It's one of my favourites.” A comment that pushed him to reflect: “I can't hate her this much, right? There must have been a reason why I liked her at first.”
Already many years earlier, however, the Liverpool musician had expressed a very harsh opinion on the song, simply defining it: “The weakest I've ever written in my entire life”. In the book “Conversations with McCartney” by Paul Du Noyer, published in 1989, he explained his fear that such a modest song could be remembered alongside his masterpieces: “I have a theory: in the future people could judge all my output without considering the context of the post-Beatles period. The risk is to go from 'Here, There And Everywhere', 'Yesterday' and 'The Fool On The Hill' to 'Bip Bop', a little song so insignificant.” And the final judgment was even clearer: “I've always hated that song!”.
Over fifty years later, “Bip Bop” occupies a completely marginal place in McCartney's vast catalog and hardly anyone will consider it representative of his career, but it retains this curious negative fame which in some way contributes to preserving its memory.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
