Temporary Secretary

Updated on Dec 07, 2023

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B-side "Secret Friend" Format 12" single Genre Electropop		Released 15 September 1980 Recorded July - August 1979 Length 3:13

"Temporary Secretary" is a song by Paul McCartney, featured on his 1980 album McCartney II. In 2013, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked it the #36 all-time McCartney post-Beatles song, calling it a "cult favorite" and an "oddly catchy electro-pop nugget, about a slightly creepy-sounding guy looking to hire a temp." In 2014, "Temporary Secretary" was ranked the 167th greatest song of all time by critics of NME magazine. They described it as "wonky electropop that didn't sound so much ahead of its time as out of it altogether."

Background

It's like a disposable secretary, and it struck me as being funny. The song is written from the point of view of a fellow who just wants a disposable secretary, and he's writing to a bureau to try and get one. I just like the idea. I just thought it was funny, you know, asking for a temporary secretary rather than a secretary. ... That sound on the track, which is like a space typewriter, is a sequence machine. I used that to give me a tempo and, again, I just made the song up as I went along. It was a little influenced by Ian Dury.

McCartney later claimed that he did, at some points, have temporary secretaries. He also noted that there was, in fact, a Mr. Marks.

I did have temporary secretaries. After I left Apple I still had business stuff coming up, so in trying to figure out how I could cope with that there were a couple of times I just grabbed someone to just put my letters in order and help. But that track isn't about a specific person. What it's about is, there was a guy called Alfred Marks, he had the Alfred Marks Bureau - he had the same name as a comedian on the radio when I was growing up. So it was just the funny paradox of seeing adverts for the Alfred Marks Bureau, the idea of some comedian having a bureau was just funny. It said 'Temporary Secretary', and I thought, that's a kind of funky thought. Then there was the secretary thing: take a letter Miss Smith, sit on my lap... all that kind of stuff.

Release

"Temporary Secretary" was released as a third single from the album only in a form of 12" single, along with the ten-minute "Secret Friend" as its b-side, limited to 25000 copies and therefore failed to chart. A 7" single exists only as a demo for radio stations. It exemplifies both the whimsical nature of the album and McCartney's use of synthesizers and other electronics in the creation of the album. McCartney claims that he viewed the song as an "experiment." It was never performed live until more than thirty years later at the O2 Arena in London on May 23, 2015.

Beatles biographers Roy Carr and Tony Tyler describe "Secret Friend" as sounding like "the unobtrusive soundtrack to ten minute second feature on alpaca-combing in Peru."

Reception

Music website Allmusic.com said of the album, McCartney II:

In contrast, music website popmatters.com said, in reviewing the 2011 reissue of McCartney II:

Beatles biographers Roy Carr and Tony Tyler describe the song as being built from an initial, repetitive synthesizer theme, with more substantial instrumental portions added over time, and finally an insubstantial vocal. They complain that the song was done without commitment and that it "grows irritating towards the end."