Birthday - Reviews

Reviewed by Ian MacDonald, in Revolution in the Head:

The first British transmission of The Girl Can't Help It prompted The Beatles to arrange this session so as to let them slip out to McCartney's house partway through in order to watch it. In honour of the film's musical star Little Richard, McCartney wrote most of BIRTHDAY on the spot before the others arrived, bolting an A major blues to a C major boogie by means of a drum passage, a screaming crescendo on E major, and a brief Cream-style guitar/bass unison. Like its lyric, this lay-out is a conceptual joke about arbitrariness and, like most such jokes, its archness quickly wears thin. Soullessly synthetic, BIRTHDAY decks its fabricated changes in a distorted production of compressed vocals and heavily filtered and flanged piano. (Compare this with the equally artificial but genuinely flamboyant DAY TRIPPER.)

Posted: 5 feb 2012

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