Paul mccartney new album7/4/2023 And he was still feeling the effects of being severely diminished in the music press in the wake of John Lennon’s murder, a turn of events that he once angrily described as transforming his partner and rival into a “Martin Luther Lennon” martyr. (Unfairly! But we’ll get to that later.) His former friend and collaborator Michael Jackson had recently absconded with the rights to The Beatles catalog. He was promoting Press To Play, one of his worst-regarded albums. If Rick Rubin encountered this Paul, he would immediately feel compelled to mournfully don pants. For Paul, that chaser is a 1986 interview with Q magazine - I recommend looking it up if all you know is the so-called “Fab Macca Wacky Thumbs Aloft” (as the British music magazine Smash Hits once dubbed him) character Paul McCartney plays in public now. Nevertheless, the manna of Beatles nostalgia can be a little too sticky sweet without a bitter chaser. Had they lived, John and George might have balked at rehashing The Beatles fairy tale into their 80s, but not Paul. Paul knows what we want, and he likes giving it to us. They meet in Liverpool, they go to Hamburg, they go to London, they go to America, they go to the rest of the world, they return to London, they rip themselves apart, they live on forever - tell it to us again, Uncle Paul! Against all odds, Paul had once again touched my own inner innocently cross-legged Rick Rubin! And this was hardly surprising, because The Beatles saga is the modern rock fairy tale, the one bedtime story we never get sick of hearing. Somehow, Rick does not seem to know any of this stuff - he just sits there cross-legged in his shorts and bare feet like the one Beatles fan who hasn’t watched Anthology five times. Pepper concept as a way for The Beatles to perform incognito at the height of their fame. And that’s pretty much exactly what he does - we hear the one about John writing “Dear Prudence” in India for Mia Farrow’s sister and the other one about young Paul riding the bus with young George and the other other one about how Paul formulated the Sgt. I avoided the show when it premiered in 2021 because I figured that Paul would recycle the same tales I already know by heart. While preparing to write this column, I finally watched McCartney 3,2,1, a Hulu miniseries in which Macca tells old war stories from his illustrious career to a perpetually amazed Rick Rubin. I am not counting live albums or the classical stuff like Liverpool Oratorio - I don’t feel like writing about that stuff, and you probably don’t feel like reading it. Quick accounting: I’m counting records credited to Wings and Paul and Linda McCartney as Paul solo records. The wait is over! It’s time to walk that long and winding road through Macca’s solo discography in order to take stock of the highs, the lows, the Ram‘s, and the Kisses On The Bottom’s. Who remembers Press To Play? London Town? Back To The Egg? There are whole swaths of his catalog just waiting to be re-evaluated and, perhaps, rescued from relative obscurity. What’s strange about Paul McCartney is that while he’s a superstar, a lot of his work remains under-discussed. Three years ago, he put out his most recent solo LP, McCartney III, and it topped the charts in the U.K. No matter the format, he keeps on making hits. He helped to make the album the defining format of popular music, and has stuck around through vinyl, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, MP3s, and Spotify. His career spans 12 American presidents - one was assassinated, one resigned, and two were impeached. That means he’s been a stadium rocker for longer than most stadiums have existed. I think we have our excuse! Consider the following: Paul McCartney has been playing in stadiums since 1965. Do we need an excuse to talk about the career of Paul McCartney? Is it enough to say that he’s (probably? likely? unquestionably?) the most beloved living musician on the planet right now? How about this: 2023 marks the 60th (!) anniversary of his first No.
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