If your favorite track on Abbey Road was “Polythene Pam”, then you’ll love “Lavatory Lil”, which is probably as good as any song called “Lavatory Lil” is ever going to be. Chris Martin must be livid and flattered. The lyrics are fascinating and surprisingly pointed: “They’re gonna set your world on fire / Objects of desire / Preaching to the choir / They can talk, but they never say much.” Is this a sideswipe at the new wave of boy bands, or is McCartney just being a grumpy old man? To prove he has been paying attention to whatever’s been happening in the last 20 years, “Women and Wives” takes Coldplay’s earnest, piano-led, midtempo template, and buffs it up to a high sheen. It could have sat nicely alongside “Dear Prudence” on “The White Album” or on Wings at the Speed of Sound or Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. “Pretty Boys” could have been recorded at any point of his career. Overdubs and Auto-Tune? Maybe, but doesn’t everybody do that now? McCartney sounds like he’s having fun, and his voice, although weather-beaten, is pretty much intact. You’re holding your breath, hoping it’s not going to be the embarrassing cringe-fest that part of you has been dreading, and you’re delighted that it isn’t. Quirky, backward sounding guitars and fake brass sections augment a typically lovely, Macca melody. The first single from the album, “Find My Way”, is the kind of amiable power-pop tune that McCartney could write between finishing his main course and starting his dessert. On occasion, McCartney steps gingerly out of his comfort zone but then retreats fairly quickly. What that album and its 1970 predecessor McCartney share is a sense of playfulness and experimentation, which III hints at but never really embraces. That album was initially critically panned but has turned from a fan favorite into a “lost classic”, which now pops up on “must listen” lists cranked out by sincere bloggers and learned tastemakers the world over. McCartney III comes a mere 40 years after his last “solo” album, McCartney II. But is it any good? Well, it’s certainly not bad. The result – McCartney III, scratched a creative itch, satiated Beatlemaniacs, and helped to prop up an industry, reeling from last year’s biological body blow. McCartney was having none of that – he just rolled up his sleeves, dusted off his computer interface, and got busy on his own. 2020 saw musicians downloading long-distance song contributions from far-flung bandmates at such a rate that it’s a miracle that the Internet didn’t shake all its rivets loose. They also seemed miffed at a press release accompanying the record, which - unbeknownst to the rest of the Beatles - publicly announced McCartney's intentions to break from his three mates, a literal Dear John letter with millions of fans cc'd (the album was also released one month before the Beatles' swan song, Let It Be).Paul McCartney was made for lockdown. ![]() ![]() It was, somewhat predictably, flayed by critics, who were perplexed by its lo-fi approach and half-baked songs ("Maybe I'm Amazed" was the lone standout). Often referred to as a proto-indie album, the semi-eponymous, single-credited (outside of some backup vocals from wife Linda, it was a one-man show) McCartney was a stark departure from the maximalist pop-rock of the Fab Four's final works - an optimistic acoustic project made of meandering love anthems and intimate lullabies. Following a brief sojourn at his farm in Scotland, he returned to London, where he wrote, recorded, and produced his first solo record in secret. As the world's biggest band was collapsing - as John Lennon turned his attention to staging bed-ins and making erotic lithographs - Paul McCartney decided he'd had enough.
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