McCartney III is Paul McCartney’s 18th solo album (excluding Wings releases which sometimes also includes his name, collaborations under different names, and classical works). More than that, though: as the name implies, it is the third McCartney album – the series within the series that now make up a trilogy all of its own.
The three McCartney-albums all stem from an upheaval of sorts which led to periods of isolation, suddenly having a lot of time on his hands. Paul McCartney has always reacted to upheaval the same way he has reacted to anything else: by throwing himself into making music.
The first album in the series, simply called McCartney, was his first album after the Beatles had come to an end in 1970. McCartney withdrew to his remote farm in Scotland battered, bruised, and with low self-confidence. That’s where he produced McCartney on his own in relative isolation, only having the family around. It was a true DIY album where he wrote, arranged, played and recorded everything himself. The album was a decidedly homegrown affair, with McCartney at times just taping himself playing guitar and singing over the air on a portable home recorder. That does not mean that the results were throwaway. There may have been relatively simple and low-fi songs like The Lovely Linda and Junk, but there would also be things like Maybe I’m Amazed and Every Night – songs with a fuller production of immense quality. An elaborate production it isn’t, but it has a raw charm to it, especially when it is understood and taken for what it is.
McCartney II followed in 1980, which was another period of turmoil. He was jailed for nine days in Japan following a drug bust on the border which made him feel that his touring days were over. He was also a bit disillusioned with Wings, not sure how to approach things in the future. Once again he sought the solace of his own home studio and ended up releasing another self-made album. It was natural for him to title it McCartney II as it had a lot in common with his 1970 album. Stylistically it saw him embrace new wave and newer sounds. With home studios now being sophisticated he could record tracks like Coming Up with a production more or less on the level of other hit records from that time. There would still be room for experiments – Frozen Jap sees Macca throw himself into synth/new wave territory, and Temporary Secretary utilises repetitive synth patterns in a way McCartney never had before (and really hasn’t done since, at least on an album bearing his own name).
As the years went on it wasn’t looking likely that a McCartney III to ever appear. He did come close following the divorce from Heather Mills, when McCartney withdraw into music again and performed most of the instruments on his 2005 album Chaos And Creation In the Backyard (referred to at the time by journalists as being ‘essentially McCartney III’) and also on his 2007 album Memory Almost Full.
It would however take a little longer for the actual McCartney III to appear. As usual, it was born out of turmoil and resulting isolation – for once not due to a personal situation, but rather due to a certain global pandemic that forced musicians to stay at home. Unable to interact with his band in the usual manner, and with a lot of time on his hands, McCartney ended up spending time on his own in his studio playing around with ideas on his own. Only at the end did he realize that he was making McCartney III. “I’d just been stockpiling tracks,” he told Stuart Stubbs of Loud and Quiet, “and I thought, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with all of this – I guess I’ll hang onto it,’ and then I thought, ‘Wait a minute, this is a ‘McCartney’ record,’ because I’d played everything and done it in the same manner as McCartney I and II. That was a little light bulb going off, and I thought, ‘Well, at least that makes a point of explaining what I’ve been doing, unbeknownst to me.’”
The three albums in the ‘McCartney’-series all have the same homegrown quality in them – this is McCartney having fun in his home studios, relaxing a bit and focusing more on capturing moods, ideas and grooves rather than creating perfect performances and takes. That makes the results all the more interesting.
McCartney III was released at the very end of the year, barely making it before the year ended on 18 December. It is interesting to note that neither of his previous DIY albums were well received at their time of release (although the albums have both become cult favourites since, with genuine fan favourite songs on both of them). McCartney III, however, was met with immediate and widespread acclaim from critics and fans, even becoming McCartney’s first UK #1 solo album since Flowers In the Dirt in 1989.
Part of the reason is that the world clearly views McCartney differently in 2020 than it did in 1970 (“the man who broke up The Beatles”) and 1980 (the drug busts grabbing bigger headlines than his music). With both of the McCartney and McCartney II albums having largely been reappraised and even frequently considered classics, in 2020 the world was excited about the prospect of a follow-up.
Not to forget the pure fact that McCartney has become a bigger living legend than any other musician on this planet. He is probably also one of the most beloved people on this planet. Anything from him is met with tons of positive appreciation. People are glad that he is still around and still making them happy. He is a positive force who peddles positive messages and pure nostalgia.
McCartney also understands promotion and how to use social media. The media blitz surrounding his previous release (2018’s Egypt Station) was a masterclass in how to do promotion right, and it did not hurt that there was an outpouring of love and appreciation wherever he went – which included an episode of Carpool Karaoke with James Corden where they caused pandemonium on the streets of Liverpool. The episode is currently seen by 58 million on YouTube alone.
All of the songs on McCartney III aren’t brand new. McCartney said his list of unfinished and unreleased songs was too long even as he started looking at new tracks. Discussing his backlog of potential releases, McCartney said: “The problem with iPhones is that you can [record] an idea … and you think, ‘That’s good, I’ll finish this later.’ Then you realize you’ve got 2,000 of these ideas on your phone! ‘Oh, God! Am I ever going to get round to them?’”
While the coronavirus lockdown presented the chance to “get round to them,” he also revealed that he had a list of songs that he either never fully finished or released. Asked how long the list was, McCartney replied “Too long! It’s songs I’ve written on holiday, and songs from before COVID where I was in the studio, right after Egypt Station, but I didn’t need to come up with an album … and also songs I liked that got side-lined.”
The album immediately makes it clear that this isn’t your typical fully-produced Paul McCartney album. It opens with the mostly instrumental Long Tailed Winter Bird, which definitely is in the tradition of his 1970 and 1980 albums – stripped-back, questing and somewhat sketchy. It is more a piece of music than a song, but a wonderful piece at that, prominently featuring a guitar riff which is repeated throughout. In some regards it feels like a song idea – a demo – but it is included here and is allowed to work as a simple piece of music that can take your mind along and allow it to drift. It simply is a nice piece of music. It is refreshing and rather catchy.
Notice how I said the track was “mostly instrumental?” There are some words in there (a combination of lines saying “Do you miss me? Do you feel me? Do you touch me? Do you…” etc.), but the voices that sing them are used as textures and joins the overall tapestry of sound rather than standing out on their own. A lovely touch, which shows us that although a song may seem homegrown and unpolished, there are still things tucked away in the corners that you could miss the first couple of times you listen.
This piece of music was what started the album sessions. The Long Tailed Winter Bird is connected to the last track on the album When Winter Comes, which was going to get a short film to accompany it that needed a little introductory music. As McCartney went into the studio to record the piece of music for the film, the world went into lockdown. This led him to simply continue working on other pieces of music to occupy his time.
The second track and the first single from the album is Find My Way, released on the same day as the album. It was written at the beginning of lockdown, and with lyrics like “You never used to be afraid of days like these / But now you’re overwhelmed by your anxieties” it certainly seems to play into what a lot of people were going through at that time, not knowing how the pandemic was going to pan out. “And we still don’t,” McCartney told Adam Buxton on his podcast. “A lot of people have at times talked about it as if it’s getting over. It looks like it’s very much. But yes, this was written at that time. I think I was thinking of people who worry more than I do – I know one of two people who just worry about life. It’s not that I don’t – it’s just that I deal with those worries and think, ‘it’s okay, there is a way out of this.’ I can usually find some optimistic exit from a bad situation. But there are some people who get overwhelmed with it, so I think I was addressing those people and thinking ‘you never used to be so anxious, but now you are, so let me be your guide. Let me help you to find the love that’s inside you.’ It just felt like a natural thing to say. But, that’s what that’s about. The rest of the song is about me saying that I can find my way. I know my left from right.”
In speaking with Daily Mail about the song and the pandemic, he also shared: “Other scares we’ve had – SARS, avian flu – they seemed to happen to other people. But this was happening to everyone, people you knew, everyone in the world. Some of my friends, some people I knew were close to going under with it. I’ve always tried to put some kind of positive spin on most things. Then I’ll think, ‘You know what, that’s enough optimism. Let’s get weary for a change’.”
Initially, the song was going in a totally different direction. “I had some rubbish stuff about going on holiday with someone,” McCartney said in the Idris Elba BBC1 interview, “and it didn’t work out. And she left and it was like… it was terrible. And so I came back and wipe it all that bit and put another middle into it, which is better.”
This situation reminded him of how he used to write songs with John Lennon, and he even channelled Lennon to help him with the track. He told Uncut back in September 2020 when he was still putting it together: “This would have been the point where John and I would have said, ‘You know what? Let’s have a cup of tea and try and rethink this. We collaborated for so long, I think, ‘Okay, what would he think of this? What would be say now?’ We’d both agree that this new song I’m talking about is going nowhere. So instead of sitting around, we’d destroy it and remake it. I started that process yesterday in the studio. I took the vocal off it and decided to write a new vocal. I think it’s heading in a better direction now.”
Pretty Boys never had such birthing pains. It was inspired by Paul seeing bicycles for hire around New York and London. It was also inspired by certain photographers who have been known to get out of the line in the studio. The ‘objects of desire’ in the song are male models. But Paul finishes the song with a warning. “You can look, but you’d better not touch…”
“I’ve been photographed by many photographers through the years,” McCartney told New York Times. “And when you get down to London, doing sessions with people like David Bailey, they can get pretty energetic in the studio. It’s like Blow-Up, you know? ‘Give it to me! [Expletive] the lens!’ And it’s like: ‘What? No, I’m not going to.’ But I understand why they’re doing that. They’re that kind of artist. So you allow it. Certain photographers — they tend to be very good photographers, by the way — can be totally out of line in the studio. So Pretty Boys is about male models. And going around New York or London, you see the lines of bicycles for hire. It struck me that they’re like models, there to be used. It’s most unfortunate.”
The song itself came together quickly, and McCartney revealed on Twitter that he got to play a very special instrument on this track: “I got to use the Kay M-1 upright bass on this. Previously played and owned by Bill Black when he played and toured with Elvis. How cool is that!”
McCartney III may be a more spontaneous and playful album than normal, but the next song is an important reminder that you can have a spontaneous and carefree mindset and still produce something of real substance. Women and Wives might be one of the best songs McCartney has written in a very long time. The message is reflective and he has genuinely interesting things to share. “Many choices to make / Many chains to unravel / Every path that we take /Makes it harder to travel.”
McCartney was reading a book about the blues artist Lead Belly, and found himself in the deep south mindset when he sat by the piano one day. “I started playing the chords at the beginning of the song,” he told Uncut. “Lead Belly inspired that vocal style – ‘Well, mana…’ – that southern blues thing. It suited that song. ‘Hear me husbands and lovers / What we do with our lives…” Then I was off on the trail. So suddenly, “Seem to matter to others.” Hey, let’s think about what we’re handing down to them. As a parent and grandparent, you think about that kind of stuff.”
The result is an incredible song – striking both musically and (especially) lyrically, poignant in so many ways. I would not be surprised to see this released as a future single from the album.
Hear me, women and wives
Hear me, husbands and lovers
What we do with our lives
Seems to matter to others
Some of them may follow
Roads that we run down
Chasing tomorrow
Many choices to make
Many chains to unravel
Every path that we take
Makes it harder to travel
Laughter turned to sorrow
Doesn’t get me down
Chasing tomorrow
The album changes gears as it gets into one of the catchiest tracks on the album with Lavatory Lil. At first it struck me as the musical cousin of Polyethene Pam (Beatle track from the Abbey Road LP). Both songs are short, half-finished ditties with humorous (and not necessarily flattering) lyrics about someone. “She’s a woman but she looks like a man” sang John Lennon about Pam, and Paul is no slouch when it comes to putting down Lil either. “If you saw it coming at you / You could look the other way / But it isn’t easy when she’s rolling in the hay” and “If you saw that she was coming / You could get up off the track / But it isn’t easy when she hits you in the back.”
There has been much speculation about who Lavatory Lil could be about, with a lot of fans and Macca-dedicated podcasts suspecting more often than not that it’s a certain someone with the initials HM. McCartney is however not telling. “To tell you the truth,” he told Uncut, “she was someone we rubbed up against. You get a few of ‘em in life, these people who screw you over. I thought, ‘I’ll have you. I’ll write a song. You’ll never know it’s about you, because I won’t tell anyone. But I’ll know.’ […] So I drew on my dislike of this individual and made her into a song character. It’s a simple little song, and I love playing it.”
You’ve got to wonder how the song would have sounded on what McCartney calls ‘one of his posh albums’ (a fully produced effort). As it is, the song greatly benefits from its spontaneous feel. “The vocal was first take,” he told Uncut. “It’s like I say, if you think you’re doing a posh, important album, you might go over the vocal and think you can improve it. But this was: ‘It’ll do.” My missus gave me this beautiful little 1954 Telecaster which I haven’t played too much until this album, so it gave me a great chance on the lead part of ‘Lil’.”
Deep Deep Feeling is the longest track on the album at over eight minutes. This was started and not finished in the post-Egypt Station sessions in 2019, and lockdown provided the time to have another look at it. No prize for guessing what this is about, as the opening lyrics go “You know that deep deep feeling / When you love someone so much / You feel your heart’s gonna burst.”
The track was picked up again in lockdown and found new life in those circumstances. This likely contributed to the strong claustrophobic feel it builds, despite being about that deep love. “If people are expecting your lockdown album to feel like lockdown,” said McCartney to loudandquiet.com, “that’s the track that feels the most claustrophobic to me, despite its being essentially about love.”
The repetitive theme of the track combined with its length certainly contributes to that feel. It gets very hypnotic and is something you can groove along to, which is why the song’s creator struggled to cut it down. “I always wanted it to keep going” said McCartney. “I just wanted it to go on forever. It’s a bit indulgent, and I was a little bit worried about that – I thought I really needed to cut it down, but I just listened to it, and I thought, “Y’know what, I love this, I’m not going to touch it.”
The album is playful and serious in turns, just as it changes from heavy to lighter musically. Slidin’ contains what cannot be described as anything but a fat groove with a lot of fuzz and a real band groove, which makes sense as this is the only outtake on the album featuring the normal Paul McCartney band and outside musicians. On the other hand, The Kiss of Venus is a tender folk ballad, simply consisting of voice and acoustic guitar, with a harpsicord coming in for the middle eight.
Seize The Day is another full band song, but a more relaxed one that makes room for very philosophical lines like “The old ways fade away / There’ll be no more sun /And we’ll wish that we had / Held on to the day.”
McCartney denies that this was a deliberate direction for the song. “I don’t go looking for it!” he told Uncut. “Your life is naturally running along those lines. With songwriting, I get an idea, then I try to work out what it is I’m saying. I follow a trail, like a trail of breadcrumbs leading you out of the wood. I was in the first verse, and completely random – it’s always random – I came up with ‘Yankee toes and Eskimos.’ What’s this all about? I like it, but how the hell am I going to get out of this? Then out came, ‘Can turn to frozen ice.’ That’s good! Not every day of your life is sunny, so when these cold days come, let’s seize the day – hang on to the good times. So it became philosophical, but I didn’t set out to write a philosophical song.”
Seize The Day is built around repetitive words and music patterns. It is definitely a pro-tools song, with themes and sections coming up again over and over, and depending on how it hits you it will either be the most catchy song on the album or the most annoying one. Personally I have to say it is not my favourite track on here – it is just too repetitive in form, which combines poorly with being too long at nearly six minutes. It does however sound like one of those songs that Macca always ends up having hits with. I would not be the least bit surprised if this is a future single from the album!
The final track on the album is Winter Bird/When Winter Comes, with an opening that links back to that mostly instrumental first track on the album by using a small section of that guitar theme as the intro. Those type of links are endearing, and also gives that first song some context as well by being part of the When Winter Comes track.
The song takes the form of a to-do list for his farm, listing several domestic chores like fixing the fence, digging a drain and making sure the crop won’t spoil, getting ready for winter. It portrays a simple life in tune with the seasons. If anything, it seems like he is reliving the time when the family lived on the farm in Scotland in the early 1970s, which he confirmed to Uncut: “It’s me remembering that period and writing a song from the point of view of that man, making a home for his family in the countryside. That’s what I used to do. Paint the roof, fix the drains, fix the fence, whatever.”
This might be the track on the album that goes the furthest back, dating to 1992. It is also listed as a George Martin production. An early version of the song was recorded in 1992 with George Martin at the mixing desk, at the same time as Calico Skies and Great Day (both on 1996’s Flaming Pie). That early take was unearthed during the research for the 2020 Flaming Pie reissue. Considering the song too good to be released as a bonus track, Paul decided to make it a featured track and produce a short film to accompany it. As Paul recorded the short introductory piece of music for the film, the world went into lockdown, and he would continue working on other pieces of music to occupy his time.
And that’s McCartney III – an album filled with interesting ideas, mostly successful experiments, and the same lovely melodies that most of his work is characterised by. More than anything, the album is filled with the pure joy of an artist who still enjoys creating and sharing it with the world. As much as this is music from someone who has absolutely nothing left to prove to anyone, his desire to do just that is still there.
The McCartney name alone guarantees a certain level of commercial success, perhaps making it less of a risk for him to release an album without the usual levels of production, but because of his deep desire to make something that is appreciated and liked, and the fact that everything he does is scrutinized on a level other artists can only dream about, makes this a brave album nonetheless. The immediate success and widespread acclaim speaks for itself.
So, on a final note… is this the final Paul McCartney album? I see the question constantly asked, as stupid as it is, and obviously the main person can’t answer that. “Everything I do is always supposed to be my last,” he told loudandquiet.com. “When I was 50 they said ‘that’s his last tour.’ And it was like, ‘Oh, is it? I don’t think so.’ It’s the rumour mill, but that’s ok.”
Jokingly alluding to a Beatles conspiracy theory, he added: “When we did Abbey Road I was dead, so everything else is a bonus.”
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