One Celebrity Podcast Too Many: How And Why McCartney: A Life In Lyrics Hit Me The Absolutely The Wrong Way

This explanation also includes why I was captivated by the first episode, and what all those complicated emotions led me to conclude

I should say first that I arrived at the blockbuster podcast series McCartney: A Life in Lyrics with the best of intentions. I was ready to be swept away, transported and removed from the daily grind by music and story, complete with the dulcet tones of the narrator, Paul Muldoon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish poet.

With full transparency, this week I’ve also been searching for a podcast recommendation for a Great Holiday Listen to recommend to Bingeworthy readers.

Last year my recommendation was Shaking Out The Numb, a whimsical exploration of the music and inspiration behind the band Sylvan Esso. The project itself is like the perfect concept album, a collaboration between band members Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn and Peabody Award-winning Rumble Strip producer Erica Heilman. This show will forever rank on my top 10 podcasts of all time list.

For other reasons, The Beatles have been on my mind likely

I’m trying hard to understand the magic of Taylor Swift. I live with two Swifties, my teenage daughters, and I have questions. Why do single tickets fetch many thousands of dollars? Why do I also find myself signing along? How did the Verified Swifties mercenary army take down Ticketmaster? And how has this woman managed to harness all levels of mega-stardom, one friendship bracelet at a time?!

Then this past summer, I found an article which drew a parallel between Taylor Swift and the Beatles. I’m late to this concept: Billy Joel first made this comparison in 2021, but it helped me to wrap my head around how it is that Taylor Swift has managed a level of stardom not matched since Beatlemania in the 1960s.

So I sat down, glass of egg nog in hand, ready to be swept away with the sounds and stories of the bigger-than-big Paul McCartney.

I launched right into Episode 1: Eleanor Rigby

I did not begin with the trailer for the series. A few days later I discovered it, and when I listened I heard how it actually lays out a whole raft of pertinent details for the show; and I should say that I firmly consider it to be one of the more perfect show trailers I’ve ever listened to, even at the extended length of 8 minutes.

Episode 1 opens with a perfect statement that is both the beginning and the end of the story when Paul McCartney spiritedly says: “Oh My God! I wanted to become a person who wrote songs, and I wanted to be a person whose life was in music.”

I loved this episode. It wove together a web of fascinating influences: Alan Ginsberg poetry, charming old ladies, JS Bach and the soundtrack from the Hitchcock movie Psycho. Eleanor Rigby is a song that manages to weave together a complicated narrative and multi-layered musical experience that’s full of rich imagery (side note: so glad that I now finally know what was meant by “Wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door,” = Nivea cold cream…this truly would have been my last guess on the planet).

Every part of this episode is impeccably produced. From the perfectly lilting tones of Paul Muldoon’s narration with his Irish accent, to the way that the actual Beatles music faded in and out of the episode, to the very present-sounding voice of Paul McCartney. It was basically perfect.

I imagined the joy of the producers as they learned that they could actually use the Beatles music as it was being referenced in the conversations, and not some obscure off-market reference to it (and then I shuddered at the thought of the spreadsheet that tracked the clearances and the cost of all of this).

In one scene, McCartney explains how he created the syncopated rhythm in Eleanor Rigby by scat signing (which he does on key). This allowed the track to be bedded down underneath at the exact right moment; a delightful touch. Then he referenced a JS Bach cello melody, with multi layers of chorded rhythms. You could almost hear McCartney waving his arms around to conduct the sound, while he imitated the cello melody “duck, duck, duck,” and we got to hear the exact right Bach piece to illustrate this influence. It was just…magic.

It’s not often in the world of producing that you get to do the thing that’s in your head, to make the interview come to life with layers of sound. This would mean that you get to illustrate an idea, or design a sound experience, not only to match what the interviewee says, but then also how he says it. It’s both difficult to pull off, and expensive to execute.

But this is exactly what happened in the first episode. The storyline was pulled together in a stream-of-consciousness that made you feel like you were peering inside the genius of McCartney, while he was scribbling the lyrics to Eleanor Rigby in a book, and also pounding notes on the piano for reference. It is brilliant.

But then I cleared my eyes and realized that something was bugging me

As I pushed on in the series (I got to the end of the free content before the Pushkin paywall), I realized that the interview sound, those key moments when you’re in the room with Muldoon and McCartney, was uneven.

During these tape scenes, the sound is distant. It’s uneven and sometimes just plainly bad quality.

I began to wonder why this would be. I had missed the caveat clearly outlined in the trailer….and when I went back to re-listen to Episode 1, I realized it was there. But I was too swept away with the music to pay attention to it.

Here’s what was bothering me: In the same room you had two of the most seminal poets the world has ever seen, who apparently spent many days together in conversation…why on earth were these not properly recorded and produced? If this was intended to be an audio project, how could this have happened?

Why did it instead sound so casual and on-the-fly? I couldn’t wrap my head around why this wasn’t the giant plan from the beginning.

How could this lapse in judgement have happened?

I did what I often do when I’m listening to a show: I imagine how and where these source tapes, i.e. the scene tape that would have been included int the pitch and sold the show…and that’s when I realized what was bugging me.

If this project had been purpose built—if the writers and producers had come in with the intention to make this an audio piece, the one that I was listening to, someone from the audio department would have to have been involved.

Someone would have made sure to do some informative training, with the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, as to how to hold a microphone. Some audio producer would have been able to explain, if not be there in person, at least five foes of microphones (wind, fans, refrigerators, cellphone interference and handling noise). And that would have changed these source tapes immeasurably.

I was then on guard to hear the “Transparency Report,” you know when the podcast explains how and why it came to be (usually it provides the true origin of the scene tape, and sometimes apologizes for bad quality).

In truth, it was there in the first episode…but I was swept away by the sheer amount of creativity being unearthed. The Transparency Report was there all along, and it was repeated in Episode 2: Back in the USSR.

[Paul Muldoon]: "We worked together on a book looking at more than 150 of his songs. And we recorded many hours of our conversations. This is McCartney: A Life In Lyrics; a master class, a memoir and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic figures in popular music. Each episode is centred about the writing of a particular song and the circumstances surrounding it."

Oh, I thought. Of course. I quickly Googled when the afore mentioned book was published (2021), and realized that he was there with him doing the research, and the recordings were for the background. All of it was recorded for transcription purposes, for their autobiographical collaboration, to get ready for what would quickly become a New York Times Bestselling Book, excerpted by The New Yorker, and a Washington Post Notable Book : The Lyrics: 1956 to Present

What’s not to love about this duo? Two of the greatest poets of our time sit down to talk through the back story of how all of those more-famous-than-famous songs came to be….Eleanor Rigby, Let It Be, Penny Lane…the unassailable list goes on.

The only problem with this book, as far as I can tell, is that you can’t listen to it. Audio is of course the obvious medium for this material.

For a project like this, with the combined profile of these two artists, it should have been a no-brainer from the get-go. For the folks reading this who work in publishing who might be reading this, including those in charge at Liveright Publishing, the wholly-owned subsidiary of W.W. Norton & Company that published The Lyrics: 1956 to Present…please think about the audio at the start, if you plan on having anything to do with audio later.

Or, just do it. Just do it in case. It’s really not a complicated thing. And there are plenty of under-employed audio folks out there right now who can steer you in the correct direction. Yes, the idea of having a small kit, or a low-key a microphone—so that you still get the unscripted moments and the best of a person without a filter—might be part of the equation. But for two performers of this calibre, I’m willing to bet they could have gotten past a small microphone between them.

Specifically, what bugs me about this is that it feels convenient. Like the audio component is the convenient side project that can be legitimately funded through the Marketing budget line, to drive the sales of books.

Sure, it can be a viable by-product, or off-product…and my guess is that Pushkin is really hoping this will come true, and it will drive boatloads of supporters to their Pushkin+ experience. Their production choices make this clear (full credits in every episode; ads throughout the episodes; Pushkin+ message off the top).

Without this intention, it’s a bit like some new basement tapes that were discovered…sort of like the ones that Richard Stengel found in his basement. These recordings were of Nelson Mandela for his ghost-written autobiography A Long Walk To Freedom, which became his Audible project Mandela: The Lost Tapes. Except that this project has a much better rationale for this, given that the original recordings were from 30 years ago, and Mandela has now passed, making a do-over impossible.

It bugs me when audio is just another ‘feather in the cap’ for writers

I’ve seen this before. The high profile author or journalist has amazing material to repurpose for a podcast project, which is of course thought to have tremendous revenue potential, to feed these fast-growing companies. It likely feels like a low-risk, high-yield alternative to taking on an original project, which likely comes from someone who doesn’t already have a massive public profile.

But. I will repeat myself here again, at great risk: If narrative podcasts are going to become more widely known an accepted—if the Pickleball Effect will ever land on this style of audio storytelling—then projects like this one need to exit the domain of marketing convenience, and enter the domain of this industry.

This is not on the hard-working producers who make these shows—who in many cases literally made magic from mediocre source tape. This is an issue that’s much further upstream. Audio producers and sound mixers can only do so much….shit in, shit out, is how it was bluntly explained to me many years ago.

As much as I enjoyed listening to parts of this project, I’m left with some rather big questions.

• How does this expand the way that other/non-celebrity-backed audio stories get told?

• How do these Giga-Celebrity shows improve and grow this side of the industry?

• How do we take the best parts of this series, and port it to other shows:

  • the ability to use actual music;

  • the way that the interviewer captured lightening in a bottle and then translate it to an audience;

  • to find a way to effectively describe the creative process in a way that’s engaging and feels engaging?

Can we take all of that, and then use the best parts of it to make more great shows in the future? Can we do this with intention and planning? And do it in a way that values the skills of audio producers and includes them in the process waaaaay earlier?

So that when it comes time to turn these incredible opportunities into a huge money-earning, genre-expanding, fascinating-inner-glimpse-of-genius, we can know that all of these ideas were harnessed and captured at their root. And not as a hair transplant much further down the road.

Let’s do this. There are literally hundreds of people available for hire for this job. DM me for reccos.

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On another note…hey audio lovers!

Have you heard about the documentary film that’s happening crowdfunding now?

Age of Audio: A Tale of Modern Audio Storytelling

Directed by Shaun Michael Colón…and featuring a hugely long list of our beloved audio storytellers (Ira Glass (This American Life), Jad Abumrad (Radiolab), Kaitlin Prest (The Heart/ Mermaid Palace),  Aaron Mahnke (Lore), Sean Rameswaram (Today, Explained / Vox), Glynn Washington (Snap Judgement), Amanda Lund (The Complete Woman, Earios), Avery Trufelman (99pi, Articles of Interest), Roman Mars (Radiotopia /99% Invisible), Al Letson (Reveal), Fred Armisen (SNL, Portlandia), Paul F. Tompkins (Bojack Horseman), Scott Aukerman (Comedy Bang Bang), Rob Rosenthal (Transom.org, Sound School Podcast), Emmanuel Dzotsi (This American Life, Serial, Reply All), CC Paschal (Louder than a Riot, Uncivil), Kevin Smith (Smodcast/ Famous Director Dude),
Scott Mosier (Smodcast), Stephanie Foo (This American Life/Snap Judgment)

AND SO MANY MORE»»

Please check out the Indiegogo campaign to see how you can support this project actually getting finished.

Imagine…a film that chronicles this industry, that managed to capture it in real time!

We are all making this industry together….join this film that wants to define this moment in time.

Help the Age of Audio team raise funds to finish the final chapter of the film…and then make sure that the rest of the world gets to see it.

Wanna hear the trailer for the film? Click play below!

FIND THE LINK TO THE PROJECT HERE!

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