Legitimate concern. But Paul McCartney is a special case. More than any other contemporary artist, he knows he can count on his legendary past to set in motion the very lucrative business of nostalgia: reissues…
Legitimate concern. But Paul McCartney is a special case. More than any other contemporary artist, he knows he can count on his legendary past to set in motion the very lucrative business of nostalgia: luxurious reissues of the Beatles and Wings catalogs, exhumations of previously unpublished images to fuel films or documentary series (“Get Back”). …, “The Beatles Anthology†, “Man on the Road†on his solo debut)… The archive vault is an inexhaustible gold mine, and millions of fans pour their dollars into it like into a Danaid barrel.
Retour à Liverpool
But when it comes to publishing a new album, the gesture is completely different: Paul McCartney knows he must have something to tell us, a story to tell, a musical territory to explore. This is how he sometimes got lost in uncertain projects (the electronic “New”, his multiple symphonic works, or the crazy “Egypt Station”). But it is also how he was able, more often than his co-religionists, to bring forth a new light by cutting rough diamonds (“Chaos and Creation”, “III”…).
The story that comes to be told with its 18e solo album (the first in six years) had never been discussed. Located in the working-class suburbs of Liverpool, Dungeon Lane is the name of this charming street where he grew up in the immediate post-war period. A stone’s throw from Forthlin Road where John Lennon slept. “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” are them. Working class kids, even demigods. Less cryptic than usual, the lyrics deal explicitly with this pre-Beatles era: the ghosts of childhood, the friendships formed in adolescence, or the deepest of intimate wounds (McCartney and Lennon both lost their mothers at the end of the 1950s), impossible to heal.
“I often wonder if I’m just writing about the past. But can we write about anything else? »
Shrouded in melancholy, the first single, “The Days We Left Behind”, evokes with delicacy and elegant restraint the years gone by. “It’s a song of Liverpool memories.â€
“I often wonder if I’m just writing about the past, but at the same time, can we write about something else? Unless you’re a science fiction writer…” he explains in the note of intent that accompanies the disc. “I lived in a neighborhood called Speke, very working-class. We really didn’t have much but that didn’t matter… because we didn’t realize we lacked everything.”
“We really didn’t have much but it didn’t matter… because we didn’t realize we lacked everything.”
It was “homeâ€
Same memories in “Home to Us”, a lively pop song that he sings with Ringo Starr. “Ringo grew up in Dingle, a really rough area. But, as the song says, it was ‘‘home.†“I wrote the whole song with him in mind. I called him and we ended up singing it as a duet, which we’d never done before.” On the chorus, Chrissie Hynde (Pretenders) and Sharleen Spiteri (Texas) provided sunny backing vocals.
To recount his parents’ financial difficulties, McCartney opens “Salesman Saint” with the melancholy of makeshift mariachis, and concludes the song with swing accents from the 1940s. Some New Orleans jazz tints color, in “Life Can be Hard”, the message of a grandfather to the baby who has just been born. Voluptuous strings illuminate the epic melody of “Momma Gets By… And in the total purity of a guitar-voice, “Down South†traces a hitchhiking trip with George, long before the Cavern Club and Beatlemania.
“He invented the grammar, syntax and sound of this musical language.”
« Mountain Top » au sommet
But compared to the outdated grain of the yellowed photos, McCartney demonstrates that the sap still irrigates his rock’n’roll soul. We will pass over the easy effects of certain overly calibrated titles (like “Ripples in a Pond”), produced by Andrew Watt, 35 years old and already producer for Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber or the Rolling Stones of the 21st centurye siècle.
However, we prefer the contained rage of “As You Lie There”, with its chorus full of fuzz. Or “Come Inside”, where the boss seems to have come to recover from the smart guys of Britpop (Oasis, Supergrass and others) what they had stolen from him. Or the astounding psychedelic madness of one of the album’s peaks, “Mountain Top”, an unexpected story of a mushroom trip, which sends one soaring above the eternal strawberry field.
Because yes, the references are there, for those who want to hear them: the flute of “The Fool on the Hill”, the harpsichord of “Rubber Soul”, the Wings-style tempo breaks… Less out of nostalgia than out of simple logic: this musical language, McCartney greatly invented it. grammar, syntax and sound.
And if the voice, sometimes frail and tired, moves despite everything, it is good that Paul is not cheating and accepts that he is 83 years old. Including sixty-five with a career like no other.
« Hello Goodbye »
It was over time between 2021 and 2025 that Paul McCartney recorded this new album, between two series of concerts around the world. As is often the case, he plays most of the instruments himself. The sessions took place in Los Angeles with Andrew Watt, or at Hogg Hill Mill, his personal studio installed in an old windmill perched on the cliffs on the south coast of England, facing Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Last week, Paul McCartney rewarded TV presenter Stephen Colbert, fired from CBS at the request of the American president, with an exceptional performance: to close the last broadcast of the “Late Show”, he performed the song “Hello Goodbye” by the Beatles, with Elvis Costello and American pianist Jon Batiste… A few days earlier, he had performed “Help” and “Drive” on “Saturday Night Live” on NBC. These two sequences are visible on video on sudouest.fr.
