Paul McCartney dedicated a song to Michelle Obama at his Washington D.C. Concert Saturday August 1st. The song was obviously the classic Beatles Michelle.
McCartney sung the romantic love ballad to the First Lady in front of 60,000 fans at Washington’s FedEX Field. Unfortunately there weren’t 60,001 in the audience. The First Lady had left the concert early to go on vacation at Camp David.
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Last year, during an MTV Europe award show where McCartney was presented with the Ultimate Legend Award, Paul thanked everyone in America for voting for Mr. Obama. McCartney later told reporters that he would love to sing for President Obama and his Wife. He hinted that he had a song ready to sing for Michelle Obama.
I was fortunate enough to have gone to McCartney’s CitiField concert and remember he used images of President Obama projected behind the band at one point. During his introduction to the White Album classic “Black Bird” McCartney told the audience the song was written about the Black struggle in the 1960s. It felt good that things have progressed since the writing of “Black Bird”.
The Beatles classic “Michelle” wasn’t written about a particular Michelle. “Michelle, ma belle” was suggested to McCartney by a French Teacher who was a friend. She also translated McCartney’s lyric, “These are words that go together well” into the french “Sont des mots qui vont tres bien ensemble” which was also used in the song. Although his friend didn’t receive writing credit, McCartney did mail her a nice check. Not a bad payday for writing two words of a Beatles song.
In the Paul McCartney Autobiography, he remembers how the now classic Michelle was easy to mix since it was only four tracks. He recalled how there were no decisions to make during mixing since they’d made them all in the writing and in the recording. He added that it took only about a half an hour to mix. With minimum effort and expense, the simple song racked up over four million broadcast performances over the years. The song even won a Grammy in 1966 for Song of the Year.
McCartney goes on to recollect in the Paul McCartney Autobiography how, not long after Michelle came out, photographer David Bailey told McCartney he thought it was a tongue in cheek joke. He thought “Michelle” was a parody of a French song. At the time McCartney literally told him to F-Off. But, now he understands what he meant and agrees it was in a way a parody of a French song.
- Beatles Geek Pete
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