Goodbye (Mary Hopkin, Paul McCartney, etc.)

I have had this song stuck in my head for the last couple of days.

Mary Hopkin’s big hit in the United States was “Those Were the Days“, but in the UK, she was known for more than this. She was one of the acts signed to the Beatles’ label, Apple records, and as a result, she benefitted from working directly with them, and in particular Paul McCartney, who can be seen in the above video. What’s interesting is that he cut a demo version that’s very similar, but is a little more reminiscent of “Blackbird” (even down to the fact that “Blackbird” is basically a demo track with a bit of sound effect added).

I don’t know, to me it’s interesting how in Paul’s music, there’s kind of a theme of there being times where one does need to say goodbye to begin again; that the goodbyes are necessary for one’s growth and sanity. It’s not the only song with this type of energy, but he wrote “I’ll Follow the Sun” and it has a similar type of energy, in my opinion, at least.

I also adore this cover. What’s interesting to me is that here it’s sung as a female duet, and it’s incredibly reminiscent of Beatles’ harmonies, but also hearkens back a little bit more to the pre-rock’n’roll female groups to my ears.

I certainly hope that this is going to help me get this song from floating around my head over and over and over again. If that’s going to happen, I suppose that this isn’t the worst song to have it happen with. 🙂

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