PAUL MCCARTNEY MCCARTNEY III SERIES

The lyrics are few, but they remind us which year yielded this album: “Do you feel me? Do you miss me? Do you touch me?” The high-pitched acoustic lead work that will be a hallmark of the album guides the song in and out, slicing across the song’s horizon like a low-budget laser light show. Eventually we get bass, drums, heavily affected vocals, and more. McCartney III begins with “Long Tailed Winter Bird,” a scrappy five-minute overture that grows from a heavily rhythmic acoustic riff into something grander without ever ceasing to feel like a multi-tracked home recording. Rest assured that he’s not chasing trends this time. The sound of McCartney - a legendary songwriting talent with boundless sentimental history on his side - messing around in his fancy home studio is actually one of the more appealing options for this phase of his catalog.

PAUL MCCARTNEY MCCARTNEY III SERIES

After a series of heavily produced records helmed by big-name industry hit-makers every five or six years, fans will likely be intrigued and entranced by this set of stripped-down sketches, especially coming just two years after 2018’s Egypt Station. Plus, in context this batch of songs isn’t nearly as alienating as his first two quarantine albums. Decades removed from his hit-making prime, most people come into a Paul McCartney album just happy to hear that voice again, content to be comforted rather than blown away. At this point any new McCartney material is hungrily lapped up by his fans, partially because at age 78 you never know which new album might be his last. It’s hard to imagine that cycle of initial shrugs followed by late-breaking reverence playing out with McCartney III. It’s out this Friday with no advance singles, partially because - in the spirit of the previous albums in this series - there aren’t many obvious singles on the tracklist. But when McCartney found himself at home this year with nothing but time on his hands, he started fiddling around in his home studio, and soon enough he had the third installment in a trilogy. It’s hard to say whether he would have ever made an album called McCartney III had a global pandemic not forced him into lockdown (or, sigh, “rockdown,” as the album trailers put it).

To this day people still flip out when he plays “Temporary Secretary” in concert.įor 40 years, those two albums stood as twin curios in McCartney’s catalog, milestones that helped to delineate a new decade of his storied career.

When he released these recordings as McCartney II in 1980, it was greeted with the same chilly critical reception that met the first McCartney release, but similarly was embraced as a cult favorite later on. Hunkered down at home in Sussex throughout summer 1979, he assembled an array of synthesizers and began toying around with the prevailing new wave and synth-pop sounds of the day, again basically working alone with Linda popping in from time to time. Although widely dismissed as unfinished slop, the album topped the US sales charts for three weeks and was later embraced by some as a lo-fi pop landmark.Ī decade later, with his ’70s arena rock project Wings winding down, McCartney once more sought to reset his career with a major departure. By spring McCartney released these homespun tracks as his solo debut, McCartney. For the most part the recordings were rough and basic enough to qualify as demos - a major pivot from the elaborate studio cut-and-paste jobs of Abbey Road and the schmaltzy pile-ons of Let It Be. What, you thought the “quarantine album” originated in 2020? At the end of 1969, reeling from the Beatles’ breakup, Paul McCartney holed up at home in London and spent the winter recording songs on his four-track, playing every part himself save for the occasional contribution from his wife, Linda.

Paul mccartney mccartney iii