While You Were Riding To Vanity Fair...

This song has such a specific meaning. It is not like Paul McCartney to do a song like this. Yet, here it is on Chaos and Creation, an album that I kept getting deeper and deeper into. I have said "Wow this is good" countless times. At around the time I first heard this album and up until the present day my life felt like Chaos because I did things I would never dare do before, and consequences resulted, some as dark I knew they would be and some surprisingly positive. It is still a mixture of Chaos and Creation in my life but I seem so much more fulfilled and self-directed. I remember that cute twist of phrase in the Dixie Chick's Not Ready to Make Nice: "It turned my whole world around / And I kind of like it."

Even in it's specificity to McCartney's life, this song has personal meaning for me in every phrase. The music is truly unique in its sadness and regret, not made for pop enjoyment, but seems to be there in support of the words only. The whole album has a bit of melancholy mixed in.

There are no deviations from meaning in the words for the sake of convenience or appeal, as usual with Macca. And yet this one, this one applies so personally to events in my life. There is not much need for artistic reinterpretation for it to fit like a glove. I haven't had such a feeling since Dylan's album Blood on the Tracks.

And the music has that minimalist layering that McCartney has employed a lot recently. Simplicity in musical phrasing just appeals to me more and more in my later years.   

"Riding To Vanity Fair"

I bit my tongue

I never talked too much
I tried to be so strong
I did my best
I used the gentle touch
I've done it for so long

You put me down
But I can laugh it off
And act like nothing's wrong
But why pretend
I think I've heard enough
Of your familiar song

I tell you what I'm going to do
I'll try to take my mind off you
And now that you don't need my help
I'll use the time to think about myself

You're not aware
Of what you put me through
But now the feeling's gone
But I don't mind
Do what you have to do
You don't fool anyone

I'll tell you what I'm going to do
I'll take a different point of view
And now that you don't need my help
I'll use the time to think about myself

The definition of friendship
Apparently ought to be
Showing support for the one that you love
And I was open to friendship
But you didn't seem to have any to spare
While you were riding to Vanity Fair

There was a time
When every day was young
The sun would always shine
We sang along
When all the songs were sung
Believing every line

That's the trouble with friendship
For someone to feel it
It has to be real or it wouldn't be right
And I keep hoping for friendship
But I wouldn't dare to presume it was there
While you were riding to Vanity Fair