Listen! Do you wanna know a secret? Do you promise not to tell?
Please listen carefully to the following recorded message. Your Monday mission, should you choose to accept it, is to track down and identify the whereabouts of this week’s long lost pop song that disappeared under mysterious circumstances many years ago somewhere near that evil mastermind’s headquarters we like to refer to as the Dusty Vinyl Archive. Agent Scratchy (Double-0 Horny) is nearby to assist you on your assignment, very cleverly concealed in the fourth garbage can on the left with her very sensitive DJ equipment. Should you need further aid, our junior agent Sponkies can be found near the sunglasses rack at Mecca (that’s a super secret code name!) trying on new shades. This earworm will self destruct in exactly 69 seconds….
Since a certain Beatles fan I know is celebrating a birthday later this week, I figured it would be fitting to give one of the Fab Four a little DVA love today. John and George already had their day… and since Ringo is already a walking jukebox of weird and lost songs, I decided to let the man named Sir Paul have a go at reviving one of his lost tunes on my side stage. Whaddaya say, Lefty?
Sure! why the fuck not? Everyone loves my silly love songs! Right Pinky? Pinky?
Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles career is littered with both smash hits and songs that most people have long since forgotten about. Paul created a bands named Wings and took it on the run, did a duet with Michael Jackson, and created a strange ode to some dudes named Uncle Albert and Admiral Halsey. He wrote “Live and Let Die” for the James Bond movie franchise in 1973, which came within a laser sight of making it to the top of the charts…
This kind of torture is almost as bad as reading my Monday posts.
That wasn’t Sir Paul’s only brush with the Hollywood spy business, though. In 1985, someone thought it would be a good idea to have Saturday Night Live alums Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd do a comedy movie about hapless spies somehow managing to save the world. Since this was the 80’s, every movie was legally required by law to have at least one radio-ready hit on its soundtrack… even a third rate spy comedy that was sure to be quickly forgotten about. The honor of coming up with that theme song was given to Paul. It was a suicide mission that Paul accomplished with surprisingly good results…. at least I think so. And even if many people think it’s a piece of shit song from a piece of shit movie, it did make it to #7 in late ’85! Here’s the theme song to “Spies Like Us”…
The music video, which features Paul, Dan and Chevy up to all kinds of nonsense is worth a look as well…. but I’m embedding the audio only version since the movie montage moments in the video are not muted and ruin the song…
It’s clearly the second best music video Chevy Chase ever appeared in.
I’m not sure why people seem to think this is a stupid song for a music legend to have recorded…. have they bothered to listen to Paul’s catalogue? Paul McCartney used to drive John Lennon up the wall with his goofy little pop songs he wrote for the Beatles back in their more serious days, and Paul certainly didn’t stop riding the cheese train to success as he grew older and wiser. My only dislike with “Spies Like Us” is that ending that seems to never….. you know, actually end. That’s another quirk Paul seems to be known for. I have a feeling when I check into my reserved room that’s waiting for me in Hell, it won’t be Journey music that’s getting piped into my hellhole 24/7 for the rest of time. No, it’ll be an eternal loop of that godawful fucking chorus of na na na na’s from that abomination that is “Hey Jude”…
That’s no never ending loop! That part of the song just goes on for 87,000 years!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
I’ll return next Monday with another earworm that is shaken, not stirred…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
I like this song and I loved the James Bond song…even when it was covered by guns n’roses once … that version was awful…
I’m not the biggest fan of GnR in the first place, but thank you for backing me up on their version of Live and Let Die sucking! Axl needed to have his jaw wired permanently shut about 30 years ago… he’s irritating!
he is! and one of his drunken a-hat fans sh*at on the hood of my brandnew nissan sportscar whileGnR had a gig near my student digs … that’s un-un-unforgiveable…
LOL! Axl got in a brawl with his asshat fans when Guns N Roses did a concert here in 1991, and the city pressed charges against him for inciting a riot. He refused to play here again until just this past Summer (And my sister went and said the concert sucked!)
oh your poor sis… hope she got her money back… or a free gun or a rose.. ;o(
My husband actually bought that movie some years ago and I think we watched it ONCE. I think he figured an Akroyd/Chase combo would be utterly hilarious…..it had its’ moments, true…..but well….like I said we’ve seen the movie once.
Pam
I saw it a time or two and it just never really clicked with me or my sisters the way many of the movies we watched over and over back then did. The song is way better than the movie…
Nice strong beat to get moving on a Monday. The perfect wake-up call and so much better than the film. Happy week.
I think a jug band version of the theme song would have topped the movie!
Wow, you remembered my upcoming birthday!! Thank you, ES! I take all of the shitty things I’ve said about you back…
Seriously, Sir Paul is the most fab in my opinion, but most of his sappy music makes me wanna hurl and scream na, na, na, na na na na….
Shitty comments can not be returned within 90 days without a receipt…
Thanks for the reblog!
It’s cool man, I flushed my receipt down the shitter…
You are welcome!
I hope you at least used it to wipe first…
But of course…
Hey, like I just told draliman, I’ve known you both for so long on WP that you both are extremely real to me regardless of not talking on the telephone.
I am just as real as your average unicorn…. and almost as cute.
Yes, you are. You’ll always be my blog brother. And guess what mug I am drinking from today?
The “I (Heart) Coffee” mug?
No, Rainbow Donkey “Believe” coffee mug, my favorite one next to the Eeyore mug that my daughter bought for me when she went to Disney with her band in HS.
Reblogged this on Knocked Over By A Feather and commented:
Wow, two reblogs in one day…most, peculiar, mama.
(Please leave likes and comments on ES’s blog, thank you. 🙂 )
If I had read anywhere else that Paul McCartney was responsible for this song, I wouldn’t believe it! I had no idea he wrote silly songs. I must confess; I never forgave any of the Beatles for Hey Jude. Slow, sad songs like that made me really, really angry when I was a kid. I’m sure Hey Jude and You Were Always On My Mind by Willie Nelson have already been burned onto the soundtrack for my personal hell. The threat of getting whipped with a belt is probably the only thing that kept me from smashing the radio when those songs came on!
Ringo seems to get all the credit for being the goofy one, but Paul wrote more than his share of schlock. Nothing worse than Hey Jude, though…. it only runs about three hours too long.
yes, trully trully awful….
The movie or the song? I’d definitely agree on the former…
ody N biskit…..here’s one de FSG doez knot rememburr ~~~~ will give thiz a listen two later ~~ ♥♥ 🙂
Oh god…….just….oh god….. 😉
Not god, just Paul. He got knighted, not sainted! 😉
LOL…..I stand corrected
Dear lord! I remember the song! That was such an AWFUL movie, I’ve been unable to remove it from my head. Horrors!!
It was bad even by the lower standards I have for 80’s movies…
I have the 7″ single of that squirrelled away somewhere…
I reckon he only wrote “Hey Jude” to show off how much he loves bananas…. I do get fed up with songs which never seem to end. It’s like the theme tune to Jurassic Park, it’s great, but when it comes on the radio (Classic FM, and you can listen online if you’re not in the UK) it does sound like John “Composer” Williams (not to be confused with John “Guitarist” Williams) got stuck in some sort of time warp until someone snapped him out of it with an ending that is sadly lacking in comparison to the epicness of the rest of the piece.