From “Dance Tonight”, released June 2007:
*Everybody gonna dance tonight
Everybody gonna feel alright
Everybody gonna dance around tonight
Everybody gonna dance around
Everybody gonna hit the ground
Everybody gonna dance around tonight*
It’s more coherent than “Uncle/Halsey”, and it’s undeniably catchy, but lyrically he’s in the same place he was when he wrote “Someone’s knockin’ on the door”.
Actually, some of us were planning to wang chung tonight instead.
Yes, but that’s the only disposable track on the album, IMO. When I heard the whole CD and my wife asked what I thought, my first reaction was “The single is piffle. But the rest is pretty good. I like it better than a lot of other albums he’s done in 20 years.”
For the record [no pun intended], here’s the lyrics.
I’ve always liked the song, if more for the music than the lyrics (but that’s how it is for most of the music I like). I’ve long assumed it was intended partly as reflection of Anglo-American friendship and culture, from WWII on (“hands across the water” being a reference to Lend-Lease and America’s eventual entry into the war, and using the UK as a massive staging ground). The “heads across the sky” is probably a reference to drugs, some spiritual insight, or both; it could also be an allusion to an [increasingly] unified Anglo-American youth culture, increasingly dominated by movies, music, fashion, and other mass-marketed diversions, filling our head-space, as it were. “Hands across the water” is an image that incorporates not just wartime alliance, but also friendships and free trade, as cemented by the handshake.
Of course, I could be wrong about all of this. But there’s one manifestation of Anglo-American friendship that Beatle fans can’t ignore – the propensity for Beatles to pair up with American women! In 1971, when “UA/AH” came out, there were two such unions (John and Yoko, Paul and Linda), with George and Ringo still married to their English first wives. But in 1978, George married Mexican-American Olivia Arias, and in 1981, Ringo married Barbara Bach (formerly Barbara Goldbach, of Queens). If this was the type of Anglo-American union that Paul had in mind, then the “hands” could have been an allusion to hands joined in marriage.
"He had to have a berth or he couldnt get to sea"? Really? And here I always thought it was, “He had to have a bath or he couldn’t get to sleep.” Which I like better.
Maybe I should head over to ye olde misunderstood lyrics thread . . .
Reminds me of a very old joke (from National Lampoon magazine).
Q: When did Paul McCartney write “Silly Love Songs”?
A: Since 1963.