I could probably have done the whole week on Beatles’ songs, and maybe somewhere down the line I will. Paul McCartney and John Lennon were especially good at using visual metaphors to get across a message, sometimes subtly, other times rather blatantly, and still leave one with a tune worth humming for the whole of the day. The Beatles’ catalog is a treasure trove of photographic possibilities, but one of the things I find interesting is how the meanings of the songs have morphed and changed over the years. Political situations that were obvious and well-known when a song was written are now more obscure, but in their place the songs pick up new issues that speak just as loudly to a current generation as they did fifty years ago.

Blackbird is one of those songs. Sir Paul, who actually did most the writing, meant for the song to recognize the burgeoning civil rights movement. For many black people across the United States, it seemed that their time had come. The symbolism of the broken wing was clear and evident to a people who had struggled and at the time it seemed they were about to break free of those shackles. Unfortunately, what we see happening now brings the actual progress of that movement into question. Was the wing actually mended or was the bird simply put into a different cage?

Contemporary interpretation of the song probably leans more strongly to the LGBTI movement and the social progress we’re seeing among those people. Certainly, they, too, have existed as an unwanted, unrecognized subculture forever, a bird whose wings were at times not merely wounded, but often removed completely. As society becomes more accepting of people of different sexualities, though, I wonder if there’s a lesson to be learned from the civil rights movement of the 60s, that a mended wing doesn’t always mean freedom from the cage.