Paul McCartney -- Coming Up

 

Well, after about a year of waiting and occasional updates, singer-songwriter Taylor Swift and her Eras Tour along with a ton of Swifties have descended upon Toronto like an army of Valkyries. She's here for six concerts over the next couple of weeks and Performance No. 1 is tonight. It should be interesting to see how things go with the downtown core pretty much sealed tight for her and security.

I'm not particularly a Swift fan myself although "Shake It Off" and "You Need to Calm Down" are catchy and fun. However, I've read that one of Swift's inspirations has been Sir Paul McCartney. Of course, since the Beatles broke up, Sir Paul hasn't exactly retired from the music business, going full bore with his own band Wings and then his solo work. 

As you all know, my full dive into pop music on either side of the Pacific began around the late 1970s and early 1980s, coincidentally when music videos became this fresh new thing to express songs. One of the first videos that caught my eyes and ears was McCartney's "Coming Up" which was released as a single in April 1980. The funk is there and the affected delivery by the man himself has always had me thinking New Wave. It's all very uptempo and amiably quirky but it was the music video that really grabbed me.

I'd assumed that Wings and a few other studio musicians were behind the former Beatle but as it turned out, it was mostly different versions of him playing and dancing about (his late wife Linda was playing the two backup singers) including a Buddy Holly version, a Sparks' Ron Mael version and even his 1963 persona. I had even thought that his wild drummer version was a riff off of The Muppets' Animal, but actually it was John Bonham of Led Zeppelin. It was quite the stunning presentation. There was a part of me that believed that Swift's video for "Shake It Off" was a spiritual cousin for the "Coming Up" video but Wikipedia let me know that the inspirations for that one were actually Audrey Hepburn, Daft Punk and Toni Basil.

"Coming Up" made it to the top spot on both the Canadian and American charts while it hit No. 2 in McCartney's native UK. Now, what was hitting the top of the Oricon charts at around the same time of the song's release?

1. Kaientai -- Okuru Kotoba (贈る言葉）

2. The Chanels -- Runaway

3. Mariya Takeuchi -- Fushigi na Peach Pie （不思議なピーチ・パイ）