Why i do not like I Saw Her Standing There
-
There's a girl band whose premise is taking songs written by men and singing the lyrics without changing them for the different gender of the singers. They use this to point out that a lot of male singers and songwriters have poor attitudes towards women. "I Saw Her Standing There" which is sung by 22 year old Paul McCartney about a 17 year old teenage girl who is young, beautiful and freshly at the legal age of consent. It's damn creepy coming out of a grown man like Macca was.
-
melaniehiscock:
There's a girl band whose premise is taking songs written by men and singing the lyrics without changing them for the different gender of the singers. They use this to point out that a lot of male singers and songwriters have poor attitudes towards women. "I Saw Her Standing There" which is sung by 22 year old Paul McCartney about a 17 year old teenage girl who is young, beautiful and freshly at the legal age of consent. It's damn creepy coming out of a grown man like Macca was.
Hi Melanie, You think THAT's creepy?! Try listening to it in the US where there's one more year before the girl would be of legal consent! I have thought of this every time I have heard this song but never expressed that thought for fear I'd be the only one to think that way.
-
melaniehiscock:
"I Saw Her Standing There" which is sung by 22 year old Paul McCartney about a 17 year old teenage girl who is young, beautiful and freshly at the legal age of consent. It's damn creepy coming out of a grown man like Macca was.
Paul was actually 20 years old when the song was released on the Please Please Me album, and younger than that when he wrote it. 17 to 20 is not creepy. Esp not back then.
-
Eeee Cor Blimey:
melaniehiscock:
"I Saw Her Standing There" which is sung by 22 year old Paul McCartney about a 17 year old teenage girl who is young, beautiful and freshly at the legal age of consent. It's damn creepy coming out of a grown man like Macca was.
Paul was actually 20 years old when the song was released on the Please Please Me album, and younger than that when he wrote it. 17 to 20 is not creepy. Esp not back then.
And I think it's okay now, because "she WAS just 17," so he's remembering his own youth. Ringo wisely stopped performing "You're Sixteen" in the nineties, being that it's in the present tense!
-
Before he sang it at the Grammy Salute, Paul prefaced the song by saying he had memories of writing it with John together on Forthlin Rd. in Liverpool, so they were still boys when they wrote it. And then he did the classic count-in. It sounded great and went down well. Still a classic rocker. I just don't see it as an older man trying to hit on a 17 year old.
-
The song talks about holding hands and dancing with a beautiful girl who happens to be 17. What is inappropriate about that?
-
Jane Asher was 17 when Paul started dating her. There was never a thought given to that being creepy at all. (he was 20, just almost 21)
-
The actor Paul Walker (who died last year at age 40) met his girlfriend when he was 33 and she was 16. Makes our Paul look pretty saintly!
-
How about a 71 year old man singing, "Well she was just 17, you know what I mean!"?
-
Hi Melanie I am sure there were millions of 17 year old girls back then that wished they were the girl in question. If you want see creepy check out marital history of Jerry Lee Lewis - a rocker from the 50's.
-
Although I do love this song, it sounds a bit odd (to me anyway) when an older male is singing it. I'm a mom with young-ish daughters and you just see things differently than the rest of the population sometimes. Think about it...the second line of that song is so effectively phrased with just those five little words "You know what I mean". Paul is a lyric genius really. He could have written: "Her eyes, they were green... or...."Her hair, what a sheen" or..."Her teeth, they were clean" No, he used "You know what I mean" and I don't think there's a breathing male on this planet that doesn't know what he means! It sounds all cute and sweet unless you're an overprotective mom of daughters and you hear those words being sung by an older man and then you feel like saying, "No, why don't you tell me EXACTLY what you mean!!!" If I were Paul I'd always preface that song with a little story of how he wrote it with John when they were young...I like that Grammy approach he used, Randy.
-
melaniehiscock:
There's a girl band whose premise is taking songs written by men and singing the lyrics without changing them for the different gender of the singers. They use this to point out that a lot of male singers and songwriters have poor attitudes towards women. "I Saw Her Standing There" which is sung by 22 year old Paul McCartney about a 17 year old teenage girl who is young, beautiful and freshly at the legal age of consent. It's damn creepy coming out of a grown man like Macca was.
Just so you are aware it was John not Paul who made it sexual with the 'if you know what I mean' line, Paul wrote that she was no beauty queen. So blame goes to ?John for sexual contexts.
-
dappa-macca:
Jane Asher was 17 when Paul started dating her. There was never a thought given to that being creepy at all. (he was 20, just almost 21)
Exactly! You took the words out of my mouth. And her parents let him move into the attic room of there home in 1963 where he lived until he moved into his own home in 1966 (with Jane in tow) he was then 24 and she was 20!!
-
Americans in particular love to indulge the delusion that teens are somehow asexual and are all saving themselves for marriage or at least the age of consent. Teenagers, of course, just laugh at this.
-
melaniehiscock:
There's a girl band whose premise is taking songs written by men and singing the lyrics without changing them for the different gender of the singers. They use this to point out that a lot of male singers and songwriters have poor attitudes towards women. "I Saw Her Standing There" which is sung by 22 year old Paul McCartney about a 17 year old teenage girl who is young, beautiful and freshly at the legal age of consent. It's damn creepy coming out of a grown man like Macca was.
You're waaaay over-thinking this and making waaaay too much out of it. Let it go!!! It's not creepy. Wasn't then and isn't now. People can listen to Paul sing it now and think about back then. And it rocks. That's what they hear and think. It isn't about a 70-year-old man singing about a 17-year-old girl. That doesn't enter into it. I mean if they can play it at football stadiums....and they do....and people sing along, does that make it creepy since it's people way older than 17 who are singing it?? :
-
Beatles4Ever&Ever:
melaniehiscock:
There's a girl band whose premise is taking songs written by men and singing the lyrics without changing them for the different gender of the singers. They use this to point out that a lot of male singers and songwriters have poor attitudes towards women. "I Saw Her Standing There" which is sung by 22 year old Paul McCartney about a 17 year old teenage girl who is young, beautiful and freshly at the legal age of consent. It's damn creepy coming out of a grown man like Macca was.
You're waaaay over-thinking this and making waaaay too much out of it. Let it go!!! It's not creepy. Wasn't then and isn't now. People can listen to Paul sing it now and think about back then. And it rocks. That's what they hear and think. It isn't about a 70-year-old man singing about a 17-year-old girl. That doesn't enter into it. I mean if they can play it at football stadiums....and they do....and people sing along, does that make it creepy since it's people way older than 17 who are singing it?? :
really.
-
It's a great song and lyric. Just leave it alone and enjoy. I hope this gets back in his set for this leg of the tour.
-
I'm at a point in my life where I can sing, "Well, she was just 47 and you know what I mean!"
-
Sadly, one day you'll be saying "She was just 87...and I don't even remember what I mean."
-
Scarlett14:
Sadly, one day you'll be saying "She was just 87...and I don't even remember what I mean."
Maybe the nurses at the Home For Aged Beatlemaniacs will be kind enough to remind me.