If you’re going to steal, steal from the best.

For most of human­i­ty, this might mean nab­bing a lick or two from Paul McCart­ney’s play­book.

For Paul McCart­ney, it meant bor­row­ing from Bach — the fifth move­ment from Suite in E minor for Lute, to be spe­cif­ic.

As he explained dur­ing the above 2005 appear­ance on the Parkin­son Show, when he and his bud­dy, George Har­ri­son, used to sit around teach­ing them­selves basic rock n’ roll chords, their show off move was a bit of semi-clas­si­cal fin­ger­pick­ing that Sir Paul mod­est­ly claimed to be “not very good at:”

It was actu­al­ly clas­si­cal but we made it semi.

Thus­ly did the chord pro­gres­sions of Bach’s Bour­ree in E minor  — a piece which “I nev­er knew the title of, which George and I had learned to play at an ear­ly age; he bet­ter than me actu­al­ly”  — inspire Black­bird:

Part of its struc­ture is a par­tic­u­lar har­mon­ic thing between the melody and the bass line which intrigued me. Bach was always one of our favorite com­posers; we felt we had a lot in com­mon with him. For some rea­son we thought his music was very sim­i­lar to ours and we latched on to him amaz­ing­ly quick­ly. We also liked the sto­ries of him being the church organ­ist and wop­ping this stuff out week­ly, which was rather sim­i­lar to what we were doing. We were very pleased to hear that…The fin­ger­pick­ing style was some­thing we admired in Chet Atkins, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a piece called Tram­bone, though it was also played by Col­in Man­ley, from a group called The Remo Four. They’d start­ed out in Liv­er­pool around the same time as The Bea­t­les.

This decep­tive­ly slow burn, now a sta­ple of Sir Paul’s setlists, debuted as a solo acoustic track on the White Album.

Bach’s Bour­ree in E minor also inspired Jethro Tull and, hilar­i­ous­ly, Tena­cious D.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Pre­cious­ly Rare Footage of Paul McCart­ney Record­ing “Black­bird” at Abbey Road Stu­dios (1968)

When the Bea­t­les Refused to Play Before Seg­re­gat­ed Audi­ences on Their First U.S. Tour (1964)

The Bea­t­les’ ‘Black­bird’ Sung in the Indige­nous Mi’kmaq Lan­guage

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Last night, Miley Cyrus and David Byrne per­formed David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” on the NBC hol­i­day spe­cial Miley’s New Year’s Eve Par­ty. And they also treat­ed view­ers to a per­for­mance of “Everybody’s Com­ing to My House,” from Byrne’s 2018 album Amer­i­can Utopia. Not a bad way to send off 2022.

Before leav­ing 2022 behind, we’ll also flag anoth­er Miley Cyrus collaboration–a per­for­mance from this sum­mer’s cel­e­bra­tion of the life of Tay­lor Hawkins. Below, watch her take the stage with Def Lep­pard and per­form “Pho­to­graph” at the 3:45. No doubt, she can sing.

Hap­py 2023.

Relat­ed Con­tent

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Watch a Very Ner­vous, 23-Year-Old David Byrne and Talk­ing Heads Per­form­ing Live in NYC (1976)

Watch David Byrne Lead a Mas­sive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

Once again, Foo Fight­ers front­man Dave Grohl and pro­duc­er Greg Kurstin have teamed up to cel­e­brate Hanukkah by per­form­ing songs cre­at­ed by musi­cians with Jew­ish roots. Above, they perform–along with Jack Black–Rush’s “The Spir­it Of Radio.” (Ged­dy Lee’s par­ents were both Jews who sur­vived Auschwitz and Dachau. Lee tells their sto­ry below.) Oth­er songs fea­tured in this year’s cel­e­bra­tion include Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.,” “Spin­ning Wheel” by Blood, Sweat & Tears, Janis Ian’s “At Sev­en­teen” and more. Find per­for­mances from pri­or Hanukkah cel­e­bra­tions in the Relat­eds below.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

Dave Grohl & Greg Kurstin Cov­er The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop” to Cel­e­brate Han­nukah: Hey! Oy! Let’s Goy!

Dave Grohl & Greg Kurstin Cov­er 8 Songs by Famous Jew­ish Artists for Hanukkah: Bob Dylan, Beast­ie Boys, Vel­vet Under­ground & More

Dave Grohl & Greg Kurstin Cov­er Van Halen’s “Jump,” Cel­e­brat­ing David Lee Roth, One of the Hard­est Rock­ing Jews, on the Fourth Night of Han­nukah

“Christ­mas time is here, by gol­ly / Dis­ap­proval would be fol­ly / Deck the halls with hunks of hol­ly / Fill the cup and don’t say ‘when.’ ” So sings musi­cal satirist Tom Lehrer on his hit 1959 album An Evening Wast­ed with Tom Lehrer — which was record­ed in March of that year, not that it stopped him from tak­ing an out-of-sea­son jab at the hol­i­days. “Kill the turkeys, ducks and chick­ens / Mix the punch, drag out the Dick­ens / Even though the prospect sick­ens / Broth­er, here we go again.” If it seems to you that he takes a dim view of Christ­mas, you should hear how he sings about every­thing else.

Now, more eas­i­ly than ever, you can hear how Lehrer sings about every­thing else, by sim­ply down­load­ing his music from his web site. “All copy­rights to lyrics or music writ­ten or com­posed by me have been relin­quished, and there­fore such songs are now in the pub­lic domain,” he writes. “All of my songs that have nev­er been copy­right­ed, hav­ing been avail­able for free for so long, are now also in the pub­lic domain.” In short, he adds, “I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs.” We post­ed about the release of those songs them­selves into the Pub­lic Domain a cou­ple years ago, but last month Lehrer made the songs avail­able online–for a lim­it­ed time.

Not only is An Evening Wast­ed with Tom Lehrer free to stream or down­load on TomLehrerSongs.com — com­plete with tracks not avail­able even on Spo­ti­fy — so is its fol­low-up Revis­it­ed, That Was the Year That Was (fea­tur­ing per­for­mances of the songs he wrote for the Amer­i­can ver­sion of That Was the Week That Was) and the three-disc col­lec­tion The Remains of Tom Lehrer. Togeth­er these albums con­tain all the music Lehrer record­ed before he stood up from the piano and became a pro­fes­sor, first of polit­i­cal sci­ence and lat­er of math­e­mat­ics (though he did teach some musi­cal the­ater as well.)

Giv­en his sec­u­lar Jew­ish ori­gins and his obvi­ous dis­dain for the Mam­monis­tic hol­i­day sea­son (at least “as we cel­e­brate it in the Unit­ed States”) Lehrer would sure­ly get a laugh from us tak­ing this free release of all his music as a Christ­mas gift. And yet, like all the best Christ­mas gifts, it has both a sur­face val­ue and a deep­er one. Despite their top­i­cal late-fifties-ear­ly-six­ties ref­er­ences to things like “new math” and Vat­i­can II, his songs can still make us laugh today. But they can also show younger gen­er­a­tions a satir­i­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty they’ve nev­er known: cul­tur­al­ly lit­er­ate, dry with well-placed plunges into the low­brow, trans­gres­sive with­out cheap cru­di­ty, all sup­port­ed by musi­cal aplomb. Maybe Lehrer decid­ed to make his music free because now, in his tenth decade, he can be sure that nobody will sur­pass him. Find his music here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tom Lehrer Releas­es His All of Catchy and Sav­age Musi­cal Satire Into the Pub­lic Domain

Hear Tom Lehrer Sing the Names of 102 Chem­i­cal Ele­ments to the Tune of Gilbert & Sul­li­van

Tom Lehrer’s Math­e­mat­i­cal­ly and Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Inclined Singing and Song­writ­ing, Ani­mat­ed

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Birth­day with Song. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune “The Ele­ments”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.