Paul McCartney and Mary Hopkin: "If I was a girl"
Something about Paulâs work with Mary Hopkin feels like he found the perfect feminine vehicle to express himself in a way that he couldnât as himself.Â
The first single he produced for her was âThose Were the Days,â a song that Paul heard in a cabaret club when he saw it performed by the American musician who adapted it from the original Russian folk song. It stuck with Paul so much he held onto it for four years trying to get various people to record it until he was finally able to make it into a single for Mary. If thereâs one thing about Paul, itâs that when he gets his mind set on a project, heâll make it happen, no matter how long it takes. He did it with Rupert Bear and, most notably and with the longest payoff time, with âNow and Then.â He holds onto things that are meaningful to him. The fact that he kept trying to produce this song for years implies that it meant something to him.
What would be meaningful about the song to him? Well for one, itâs very Paul. Only Paul McCartney would see the pop potential in a klezmer infused Russian folk song and we love that about him. Lyrically, though, itâs no mystery why the song connected with him:
Thereâs no way to read those lyrics and not imagine Paul and John, hanging around Liverpool and talking about how they were going to make it big one day.
Themes of nostalgia for days of youthful idealism are familiar territory in Paulâs songs, but they don't really make an appearance until his later years in songs like âEarly Daysâ and âOn My Way to Work.â Hereâs a song he would have first heard sometime in 1964 or â65, at the height of Beatlemania, and heâs already resonating with a pull to this time before fame. At this time it was still pretty common for The Beatles to record cover songs, so why not this one? Maybe it's as simple as it doesn't quite sound like a Beatles song, even to Paul's eclectic ear. But this is a man who made "Mary Had a Little Lamb" into a single. If he wanted to, he would have gotten his band to record it. I think this song felt a little too personally revealing for him.
The song goes on to describe the feeling of looking in a mirror and seeing the unfamiliar face of a lonely woman looking back. Paul loves a lonely woman motif, think of âEleanor Rigbyâ or âAnother Day.â He uses these characters to express himself artistically while maintaining a level of distance from the listener. The women are, at least on some level, all him. Here, heâs using the actual woman Mary Hopkin to sing a song that for whatever reason, feels a little too real for him.Â
When Paul found Mary and matched her to this song heâd been holding onto, I think that opened up a door for him to think about, well if I were a girl what kind of a record would I make? He'd been exploring songwriting through a woman's perspective for years as a way to express vulnerability, but here he had an actual conduit to explore a more complete and indulgent body of work. If he were not only freed of his gender but also of the burden of being Great Songwriter Paul McCartney, what might he create?
He filled the album with his favorite pop standards and show tunes, songs that Mary didnât really like and that didnât fit her folk background. Paulâs selections on Post Card are the kind of song that show his love of âgranny musicâ as heâs still mocked for, and they are, dare I say, a bit camp. I mean, whatâs gayer than âThereâs No Business Like Show Businessâ? Notably, these are also the sort of songs that years later he would feel comfortable using as a vehicle to perform high-camp androgyny, like with âGotta Sing Gotta Danceâ. Which is to say that this aspect of musical theater is something that intrigued him, but that in 1968 he felt belonged to the realm of girl-Paul, i.e. Mary Hopkin.Â
Then of course thereâs âGoodbye,â the song that Paul wrote for Mary. In the demo that he recorded, he doesnât change the pronouns when he sings âFar away, my lover sings a lonely song and calls me to his sideâ. But now heâs taking the character to a new level, heâs performing as Mary, singing the song in an imitation of her falsetto to make it clear that the song is for her. But the song isnât just a generic love song, itâs about two lovers who make music, who call to each other in song but are being separated by some unknown force.Â
If Mary is his way of exploring girl-Paul, then this is really the ultimate expression of that, and of course it's about John. As he said in 1985 when talking about the breakup, âI mean, I couldnât stand in the way of someone whoâd fallen in love. You canât say, âWhoâs this?â You canât really do that. If I was a girl, maybe I could go out andâŠâ Sure, if he were a girl he could sing campy show tunes and sappy nostalgic songs about dancing with his best friend and no one would look askance. But really, if he were a girl, he could tell John he wants to be with him.
Post Card was recorded in late 1968, at the same time as the White Album, right as things with John were starting to come apart in earnest. I think Paul was trying to do what he could to hold onto John. He found a certain freedom in using Mary to explore his feminine side, to pine for his youth with John, to try to call him back and sing to him unashamedly using male pronouns. Whether consciously or not, his desperate lamentation of "if I was a girl" began here.
