BirdNote; Blackbird, by Paul McCartney

BirdNote®

Blackbird, by Paul McCartney

In celebration of the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Written by Ellen Blackstone

This is BirdNote.

[Eurasian Blackbird singing]

This birdsong seems familiar. Intriguing. It’s the song of the Eurasian Blackbird.

[Eurasian Blackbird singing and guitar lines from “Blackbird”]

Paul McCartney and the rest of the Beatles most certainly grew up hearing Eurasian Blackbirds, in their home of Liverpool. Eurasian Blackbirds are common in the gardens and throughout the countryside in Great Britain.

[Eurasian Blackbird singing]

But McCartney wasn’t singing about the bird. He was singing about the racial strife in the American South in the 1960s. As he said later, “This was really a song from me to a black woman, experiencing these problems in the States: ‘Let me encourage you to keep trying, to keep your faith; there is hope.’”

Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Take these broken wings and learn to fly.

All your life

You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

It was a trying time, and Sir Paul said later that he saw the song as empowerment.

Blackbird fly, blackbird fly

Into the light of the dark black night [Close with McCartney and the Blackbird]

###

Sounds of Eurasian Blackbird provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York, 84549 recorded by M. Medler.

“Blackbird” from The White Album with the Beatles, E.M.I. Records, 1968. Written by Paul McCartney. (McCartney said the music was inspired by J.S. Bach's Bourrée in E minor.)

Producer: John Kessler

Executive Producer: Chris Peterson

© 2015 Tune In to Nature.org January 2017 Narrator: Mary McCann

ID# EURBLA-mccartneyp-01-2012-1-16

'I had in mind a black woman, rather than a bird. Those were the days of the civil rights movement, which all of us cared passionately about, so this was really a song from me to a black woman, experiencing these problems in the States: “Let me encourage you to keep trying, to keep your faith; there is hope.”

As is often the case with my things, a veiling took place, so rather than saying, “Black woman living in Little Rock” and be very specific, she became a bird, became symbolic, so you could apply it to your particular problem.'

Barry Miles, quoting Paul McCartney, in Many Years from Now