Five Beatles Songs That Make No Sense

3: Blackbird

What ‘They’ Say The Song Is About

Many people think that the song is about empowerment of some kind, with varying suggestions coming in saying that Sir Paul is trying to empower the South Americans, the female gender, blackbirds (Bill Oddie would be proud) or black people. In fact, a user who has for some reason decided that “1Cancer” would be a great idea for an internet forums name is the first to suggest that the song is about the plight of African-Americans, which leads to this classic reply from another user – “yeah, that’s what I heard too *agrees with 1Cancer*”. Now if that alone doesn’t single-handedly prove the genius of internet forums, I don’t know what does.


The Song, Then

You may have noticed that all the songs I tend to pick on are written by Paul McCartney, and the reason for that is that I haven’t ever forgiven him for breaking Jane Asher’s heart. Poor girl, she never knew what was coming. But anyway, let’s get to the song. Paul describes a bird singing at night-time, which for a start is biologically very very unlikely. Apart from owls, have you ever heard birds singing at night-time? Everyone knows that birds only sing in the early morning, and they only do it then so they can annoy anyone nearby who happens to be trying to sleep. Said it before, I’ll say it again: birds can be cruel. So say we accept this as fact though, that the bird has perhaps got a mixed-up bodyclock and starts singing at night-time. Showing his skills as an empathiser, he tells this bird with “broken wings” to learn to fly, which seems unnecessarily cruel to me. Dude, the thing is in some quite hideous pain right now, and you want it to fly? Why, is this one of your sick, sick games? You’re a monster, Paul McCartney!
And this is made worse by the fact that he continues to taunt the crippled creature with the line “you were waiting for this moment to be free”. Way to kick a bird when it’s down, McCartney! We’ve established that the bird is injured and in pain, and now you continue to taunt it endlessly? You’re a heartless Scouse bastard. Yet of course, many people would suggest this song is about black people, and there’s just one flaw with that logic: black people can’t fly. Or at least, not that I know of. I know black guys can jump really high, but I’ve yet to see them take off into the air and start soaring around merrily, laughing at the white folks below. Although… that would probably make for a good Stephen King novel.
So we’ve established that the song isn’t about black people – when have they ever had troubles, anyway? It’s not as if they were cruelly enslaved by other people for generation after generation and perceived to be an inferior race, people! What a—wait, what? They were? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH OLD PEOPLE? First they have all these wars, and now I find out they’ve been enslaving other races just because they’re different? I am so ticked off to hear that, you have no idea. I’m going to go to a residential home right now and beat up some pensioners, as my own personal way of making up for Segregation – black people of the World, I hope this small act helps in some way to heal the wounds that my ancestors caused for you.