Blackbird (song)

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"Blackbird" is a Beatles song from double-disc album The Beatles (also known as The White Album). It is played by Paul McCartney on acoustic guitar, accompanied by a metronome giving it a discreet beat, and features recordings of a blackbird singing. Many bands and performers have made covers of it, including Crosby, Stills & Nash, Doves, Sarah McLachlan, Harpers Bizarre, Bobby McFerrin, Dan Fogelberg, Dave Matthews Band, and Elliott Smith. It was recorded 11 June 1968 in Abbey Road studios, with George Martin as the producer and Geoff Emerick as the audio engineer.

McCartney was inspired to write this while in India, after a bird woke him up at six in the morning. Charles Manson took the song, along with "Helter Skelter" and "Piggies", as a metaphor for black and white race relations in the United States, which helped inspire his murders. Paul said in 2002: "It was written when there were a lot of troubles in the southern states, over civil rights. I don't know if any of you know, but in England we sometimes call girls 'birds'… and I kind of wrote this song with that in mind." The first night Linda Eastman slept over, McCartney played it to the fans camped outside of his house.

McCartney revealed on PBS's Great Performances (Paul McCartney: Chaos and Creation at Abbey Road), aired in 2006, that the guitar accompaniment for Blackbird was inspired by Bach's Bouree, a well known classical guitar piece. As kids, he and George Harrison tried to learn Bouree as a "show off " piece. Bouree is distinguished by melody and bass notes played simutaneously on the upper and lower strings. McCartney adapted a segment of Bouree as the opening of Blackbird, and carried the musical idea throughout the song.

Elements of the lyrics ("take these broken wings and learn to fly") have re-appeared in other pop songs over the years, notably the number one hit "Broken Wings" by Mr. Mister. Sections of Blackbird were incorporated into The Waterboys' cover of the Van Morrison song "Sweet Thing" on their album Fisherman's Blues, and into the end of U2's "Beautiful Day" during their set at the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, London on July 2nd 2005, as well as some of the shows on the Vertigo Tour. Dynamite Hack references it at the end of their cover of Boyz-N-The-Hood.

"The Wings" from Brokeback Mountain partially has a similar opening.

The Savage Garden song, 'You Can Still Be Free' from the Affirmation album has the line '....take these broken wings and learn to fly...' which is also a line in Blackbird.

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