B J Conlee:
yankeefan7:
wingsoverkc:
I can never forgive RS for the awful and unfair review of "Ram" in 1971. Back then RS was a huge influence on the music industry and for them to trash probably one of the finest albums EVER just showed incompetence and anger. The review of "Venus and Mars" was also very negative and not accurate at all. And recently, the review of "Memory Almost Full" was incredibly lazy journalism; did the author actually listen to the album? I think not.
RS was not the only ones that trashed RAM, it was received quite negatively by almost everyone in the media when it was released. People may disagree but to blame just RS is unfair. See below. "Playboy accused McCartney of "substituting facility for any real substance", and compared it to "watching someone juggle five guitars: It's fairly impressive, but you keep wondering why he bothers." Robert Christgau, writing in The Village Voice, called it "a bad record, a classic form/content mismatch", and felt that McCartney succumbed to "conspicuous consumption" by overworking himself and obscenely producing a style of music meant to be soft and whimsical. Writing some four years later, Roy Carr and Tony Tyler from NME suggested that "it would be naive to have expected the McCartneys to produce anything other than a mediocre record ... Grisly though this was, McCartney was to sink lower before rescuing his credibility late in 1973. His fellow ex-Beatles, all of whom were riding high in the critics' favour with their recent releases, were likewise vocal in their negativity. Lennon famously hated the album, dismissing his former songwriting partner's efforts as "muzak to my ears" in his song "How Do You Sleep?". Even the affable Starr told Britain's Melody Maker: "I feel sad about Paul's albums ... I don't think there's one [good] tune on the last one, Ram ... he seems to be going strange."
__________________________________________________ The early 70's was a long, long time ago and all that criticism towards his work at the time seems pretty weak and inconsequential at this point. As we now look at Paul's total career in 2014, he has proven all the pundits wrong. His longevity of writing such creative and diverse music is unbelievable. If you only look at the last 20-25 years, Paul has given the world incredible music. Albums like Flowers in the Dirt, Flaming Pie, Chaos, MAF and now New will only grow in respect as his legend continues. Even critics who don't like Macca for whatever reason now have to concede that he has tremendous talent. They know that for them to say otherwise would make them look pretty darn stupid.
I agree with you and have often stated the critics have been very positive of McCartney's work since FITD and even pointed out RS liked "Press To Play" more than most fans on this board. My response was basically to all the people who can't get over McCartney getting bad reviews in the 1970's. from RS. Personally, I never thought RAM was that great either and still don't. It is not awful but it is not a "classic" IMO.