Paul McCartney: Paul McCartney III Review

I’m not ashamed to call Paul McCartney my favorite Beatle. But it is sometimes embarrassing to say if the person mentions Paul’s solo material.

I thought better of his last album, Egypt Station, than most critics probably did. That’s not to say I’m prepared to buy the vinyl and play it all the time, but it did have some great tracks like “Dominoes,” “Come on to Me,” and my favorite McCartney solo song, “I Don’t Know.”

The thing about Paul that makes me love him so much is that he was a foil to John. John was the abstract, bluesy, art rock voice of the band with songs like “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and “Yer Blues.” Paul, on the other hand, was the brighter, happy-go-lucky, pop voice of The Beatles with songs like “All My Loving” and “Rocky Raccoon.” The more I listen to Paul McCartney III, the more the songs I used to think were okay are pretty good and some of the songs I used to hate not seem so bad anymore. But while pop music can certainly have as much soul and substance as rock, the older Paul gets and the longer he keeps playing, the more watered-down his lyrics become on his albums. And I can’t be the only one who’s noticed his new demeanor of “Look at me, I’m just like one of the cool kids!”

Anyway, we’re here to talk about the music. Paul is obviously trying to set up the album with the opening track; just looking at the titles of the first and last tracks will give you that vibe. But seriously, I enjoyed this set up better than the rest of the album. Since I listened and reviewed Putzy’s Curses, I’ve grown a new respect for instrumental rock. The acoustic guitar opens the track in the best way, and it’s appropriate for the image of a winter bird of nature. Paul’s vocals coming in don’t screw up the mood and add a nice change to the repetitive melodic pattern.

Remember how Kula Shaker introduced Pilgrims Progress – an album about love and longing – with a song about the death of childhood, and then ended it with “Winter’s Call,” a song about the death of a grandfather? And you remember how Cage the Elephant opened Social Cues with the raw and dangerous “Broken Boy” and ended with the finality of “Goodbye?” Do you remember over 50 years ago when Sir Paul McCartney himself opened the greatest album of all time and reprised it right before the masterpiece that was “A Day in the Life?” Well, for Paul McCartney III, the winter bird practically disappeared into the snow in a flash, slapping us in the face with its long tail as it leaves us with the second track of the album.

I don’t know what I was expecting after “Long-Tailed Winter Bird,” but I should’ve prepared myself for “Find My Way” regardless. Forget everything that was set up in the opener, “Find My Way” shatters the image of the winter bird as it continuous bounces it from wall to wall with the maddening drone of the up and down pitches of the main melody. Turn off the music, hum the melody to yourself, and just wait for the other person in the room to yell at you to shut up. Paul McCartney has an amazing musical brain – he has come up with such amazing songs like “Yesterday” – but “Find My Way” is just that one tune you him to yourself when you’re working on something tedious and about to go out of your mind with boredom.

McCartney proceeds to swing you left and right as “Pretty Boys” returns right back to the tone set by “Long-Tailed Winter Bird.” Similarly, “Women and Wives” follows along with the initial setup, but the low tones don’t match with his tenor voice and makes him sound so much older than he tries to make himself sing. Paul McCartney has an impressive range, but he is certainly not a bass.

The best and (last salvageable) track of the album comes with “Lavatory Lil” with the same funk and charm that came with the best songs from his past albums. It has the melody that “Find My Way” tried to achieve but failed at miserably. Any jazz musician will tell you: when you want to create a catchy melody, you play the same thing twice, change it up a third time, and then play the same thing the fourth time. Combined with the guitar riffing in the background, the song leaves me with the relief that Paul hasn’t entirely given up on good songwriting.

But then we fall right back downhill with “Deep Deep Feeling.” By the time it hits the midpoint, you think it’s over – you wish it was over. The lyrics and distorted elements fit the “deep deep pain of feeling,” of detachment and disassociation of depression, but it simply drags on way. Too. Long. It should have ended at the seven minute mark, but it doesn’t. It switches to an acoustic number, as if Paul couldn’t decide with version of the song to stick with; as if he thought he had to go back to the acoustic mood he set up with “Long-Tailed Winter Bird.”

The rest of the album plays on in a seemingly never-ending mess. “Slidin’” seems off with the volume and levels, and “The Kiss of Venus” serves as a foil to “Women and Wives” being too high to be digestible for the ear. Is Paul trying to rehash “Blackbird?” Because he’s failing miserably. It’s not whimsical, it doesn’t fit his voice, and it certainly isn’t as memorable as any of the other songs on the album, dare I call it the dullest of them all.

We get a brief period of rest with “Seize the Day” before we jump back into “Deep Down,” as if “Deep Deep Feeling” wasn’t long enough. As for the start of the song, it’s as if their was another song that was supposed to bleed into this track that was cut from the album. It comes literally out of nowhere and is cut off before it starts and before it can say anything for the track. Granted, the horns make it more retainable than “Deep Deep Feeling,” but it’s still a miserable continuation of the former track. Even more insulting are the growling vocals that Paul pulls off so well but that were only seen on one of the inferior songs of the record. The song as a whole seems pieced together – and the same goes for “Deep Deep Feeling.” Paul is known as one of the greatest multi-instrumentalists, and this is what we get?

And here’s where the winter bird returns to make an appearance – but this time, it’s not welcome. It’s a “hey, remember that great idea we introduced at the beginning that we sprinkled and promptly interrupted throughout the rest of the record? We brought it back, but we’re interrupting it again with the song that should have foretold the rest of the album!” “When Winter Comes” isn’t a terrible melody, but it’s the fact that it was obviously a point to set a theme or central idea for the record that was promptly forgotten that makes the song unwelcome. This is Paul’s lower range, why didn’t we get this from “Women and Wives?” The bird is no longer a mascot or symbol for the record, it’s a tool used to mock us before shoving the more mainstream-friendly hits down our throats.

If you ask me, Paul McCartney III had so much potential to be a great album, to introduce ideas and bring back the sunshine to the winter-devastated planet in 2020, but it instead destroyed itself with interludes and vocal patterns that overstayed their welcome, the intended idea held over our head but never fully acknowledged, and the desperation to show that Paul is youthful and hip and can sing anything he wants in any range that he wants to sing. He’s one of the last great mainstream songwriters left alive, he outlived his dear friend John Lennon who died much too young, and it almost seems a slap to the face of all Beatles fans alike that he tries to face himself as youthful as he was in the 60s where music was pure and The Beatles spit in the face of traditional and easy paths to stardom and number 1 hits. What happened to writing hits and keeping them as their own singles? The numbers are showing anyway that albums aren’t as treasured as they used to be. Maybe we need to go back to a time where not every single an artist released was set to appear on the album. If Paul McCartney III was left to be a piece of art lead by the winter bird foretelling of winter’s arrival, it could’ve been the next great album to be remembered even after Paul left us.

Rating: 5.0/10