Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger are music legends – but they are capable of bad songwriting 

Fans of veteran songwriters are in no short supply of material this year. Between Bob Dylan returning to the stage and the likes of Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger releasing new material, it is worth remembering their spot in rock and roll history as not just innovators, but as poor wordsmiths. The volume alone of Dylan’s back catalogue means a few duds here or there are inevitable, though he has honed his craft post-Oh Mercy into a conscious, plugged-in commentary on mortality and meaningful musings on life. McCartney and Jagger are poised to do much the same this year, with The Boys of Dungeon Lane and The Rolling Stones’ Foreign Tongues offering what may very well be a last hurrah for both frontmen. Both are responsible for some of the all-time greatest songs, but have, in recent years, proven they are capable of bad songwriting. Every artist is, but the legacy acts as a thin defence for the dedicated fan.  

It’s where criticism struggles. McCartney has, in the last twenty years, put out music that rivals his very best with The Beatles and Wings. Entire projects like Chaos and Creation in the Backyard and Memory Almost Full are on par with the all-time greats. Fine Line may be the best solo song he has released since his self-titled album. Jagger, too, has afforded listeners with some excellent work on the forgotten A Bigger Bang release and a blues-y covers album with The Rolling Stones, Blue and Lonesome. What some listeners cannot stomach is the fact that, between those hits and that high quality of work, are admittedly poor songs. Be it The Beatles or The Stones, Wings or even SuperHeavy, the pair have issued their very best works as though hits were an inevitability, not luck of the draw. But in the last few years, the two reveal that they are, indeed, human, and recent releases have confirmed they are susceptible to bad writing.  

More recently for McCartney than Jagger, with Home to Us. A song used to promote The Boys of Dungeon Lane, it can be forgiven as, at best, a forgettable piece of work that puts McCartney and Ringo Starr in the studio for perhaps the final time. But it’s built on being the first-ever duet between the two. A selling point becomes the fixture, the way to sell the song, rather than the secondary point to McCartney’s reflective writing. Home to Us was pitched, performed, and planted on that crossover alone. A chance to hear a musical duet happen, allegedly, for the first time. Forget the decades of work they had together in the studio and on stage, this is a box they had not checked. This is not enough of a reason to pull the song and its sound through, but this is what McCartney relies on. Legacy.  

Legacy is what pulled The Rolling Stones back into the studio, eighteen years after they released A Bigger Bang. Jagger has been cited by his bandmates as more keen on the studio, but only when he has ample material to offer. A 2016 covers album, Blue and Lonesome, remains the last strong release from the band. Foreign Tongues is set for release later this year, and already sounds remarkably stronger than Hackney Diamonds. But that’s for two reasons. The writing is sharper, and the band has returned to that comfortable spot of blues rock that has served them well for many years. Where Jagger has one eye on pop culture, he has perfected the art of nostalgia bait and using big names to profile bigger songs. It doesn’t always work. Hackney Diamonds is proof enough of this. 

What the album struggled with at the time is feeling inherently like an album by The Rolling Stones. Everyone from Elton John to Lady Gaga, even McCartney makes an appearance, chips away at what the core meaning of the band is. Now a three-piece after the death of drummer Charlie Watts, it’s fascinating to hear the band, instead of knuckling down on what makes The Rolling Stones so unique, turn to a revolving door of collaborations. On paper, it’s an amazing pairing. But rarely is the crossover of two legendary artists enough to confirm the quality of a song. It may be cool to hear Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand in the studio, but in practice, it’s a box-checking exercise deployed to adapt nostalgia to sales.  

All well and good, given the volume of musicians now doing that. It could be argued that McCartney and The Rolling Stones are working hard on keeping their musical spirit alive with these new releases. We cannot doubt the sincerity of such projects. There is never a moment across the band’s discography in the last decade where it feels as though they’re trying to squeeze out that little bit of extra love and fame. There’s no need for it. But there is no need, too, for fans to decry anyone who points out that this material is far from their best. Age has nothing to do with it, longevity neither. Dylan, McCartney, and Jagger have all released some of their very best works in the last decade. They are allowed hiccups, but we must point them out when we see them.  

Take Angry, the lead single of Hackney Diamonds. Not the finest piece of work from The Rolling Stones, a relatively plodding song that feels like it’s playing dress-up as a blues-rock band from the past. That’s what it was. The Rolling Stones have learned from that experience and tightened up for Foreign Tongues. Both Rough and Lonesome and In the Stars are of a quality that fans can be proud of, the band too. That is not a guarantee. Even the most dedicated of listeners will find a problem or two with a band’s work, be it their latest release or a period of really poor material. That is okay. What is not okay is defending the artist irrespective of the work at hand. McCartney and Jagger, Dylan too, are riding out a wave of laudable work now. Each had a period in the 1980s where their work was derivative, lacking, and often just plain bad.  

But to defend those earlier moments in hindsight is to miss the point, their impact on culture. The Rolling Stones could come out firing on Foreign Tongues with their best album to date. History will decide that, not contemporary thought. But what it has also decided is which of their works are worth remembering. It happens to all artists in every medium, though that is not to say the deep cuts and cult favourites are any less or more than the defining works. What is clear, though, is that some of the material pales when compared to the high bar set by their own work. McCartney may find himself always looking over his shoulder at the music he made before, but it does him no favours to pull at that thread time and again, as he has done on The Boys of Dungeon Lane.  

The same goes for Jagger and company, whose return to blues rock is favourable, but not a definite victory. Hackney Diamonds had the spirit of the band but that was it. It felt like listening to a band whose longevity was already in place and so the heavy lifting did not need carrying out. That has changed this time around from what fans have heard so far. Artists can make misfires, and they can also come into their own on a whole new level should they be given the chance. It’s all about accepting that even your favourites can make a bad or middling piece of music. Accepting that is to appreciate their better, earned works, and to highlight that not everything has to be a masterpiece.