Tom Dunne: New album from Paul McCartney shows his class really is permanent
Paul McCartney pictured recently in a photograph by his daughter Mary McCartney.
A new Paul McCartney album: how can you not be nervous? It’s like one of your children slipping you their English essay. What if it’s rubbish? What will you say? I don’t think “Well done, little man” and offering ice cream will work here. He’ll know you don’t like it, won’t he?
He’s a canny one, Macca. I was at Glastonbury when he told the audience they weren’t fooling him. He said he noticed the number of phones held aloft in the air fall when he did a new song. “I do see it, you know,” he told us. After that, I was afraid to put mine down.
It’s his own fault of course. He’s the one who set our expectations so high, the one who changed the direction of music etc, etc. And he’s 83 now, a long way past 64, which itself once seemed oh so old. How does an 83-year-old Macca compete with his 20-something self?
The answer is that he doesn’t. Because he doesn’t need to. On — by my calculation his 41st studio album — he views the ever-fading Beatlemania in the rear-view mirror with a wistful, gentle ease. It isn’t “she was just 17” anymore. It is something more poignant, and he nails it.
Form is temporary and class is permanent, and Paul is still pure class. Still a master of melody killer hooks, simplicity, middle eights from heaven, and songs that sound like they have always been with us. This is what an 83-year-old pop genius sounds like.
He is looking back. He sings about growing up, hitch hiking with John, his mum and dad, days he remembers, and sounds that bring him back. But it isn’t maudlin. It is poignant, no question, and moving too. But is also joyous and grateful and, dare I say it, comforting.
The opener is a simple masterclass in song writing. The dynamics, the changes, the simple lyrical hooks that seem to come so naturally to him, the drop-dead gorgeous middle eight. If — definitely about John — isn’t a song about wanting to be back, then I don’t know what is.
is a quiet masterpiece. Balanced against the pride in what they achieved and the fact nothing can erase “the days we left behind” is a gentle warning: “Nothing stays the same, no one need to cry.”
A reminder perhaps to family and friends, and maybe you and I, that, to quote George: “All things must pass.” It good that heft and messages like “Live for now, make every moment count” have already been delivered by track three, because after that you can just settle into a seriously beautiful album. I don’t know how producer Andrew Watt works his magic, but, with Macca playing every instrument, he doesn’t put a foot wrong.
There are simple love songs such as ; songs that doff their hat to , like and the duet with Ringo, and songs that I could only put into a category marked Different Class: and
particularly stands out. In it, Paul, to these ears at least, addresses his parents and all they did for him. “My father was a salesman, my mother a saint,” he sings in a song that acknowledges the enormous sacrifices that parents, not just his, make in trying to create a better world for their children.
He has never lost sight of that, never forgotten, but it’s still touching to hear him appreciate it. We all want the best for our children. We all makes sacrifices; we would all do anything for them. It’s just that in their case, the sacrifices made by James and Mary Patricia McCartney helped produce one of the greatest song writers in the world.
But it was that brought a tear to my eye. The intro is simply stunning, but it is Paul’s voice that does the damage. Yes, it is a little weaker, but like Johnny Cash on the American Recordings, he learns to use it as a strength. It adds extra character, and even more emotion.
There are standout tracks on this album that I will revisit and enjoy and love for years to come, a trick this man has been pulling off since March 22, 1963. Wow!
