This was a huge Beatles’ hit when I was a kid. It seemed everyone knew and loved the song.
Watching the video below, it is interesting to see how the aging process has affected some former stars. But watching them “whoop it up” and celebrate in this video is incongruent with the meaning of the piece.
I did not know about this until the last several years, but Paul McCartney lost his mother Mary of complications from breast cancer when he was 14 years old. Although he was from England, his parents were Irish Catholic.
He was not referring to the Virgin Mary when he spoke of “Mother Mary” in this song. Instead, he was speaking of how his own deceased mother would “communicate” with him after her death, whom he grieved deeply and whose death left him feeling alone and directionless.
The content of this video and Paul’s original impulses that motivated the song– although poignant– speak to the degree to which the celebrity culture is spiritually lost:
I think celebrities have nothing to say to us except their left wing group think , so let us be. Thank you.
They have mindless things to say. One of the best things we can do is refrain from paying attention to them.