Word: mccartneyes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...talented people who are determined to succeed do not stay in the Village. They get out, and some, like 23-year-old James Taylor, make it. Taylor went first to England, Paul McCartney arranged the recording of his first album on the Apple label. And in his first song Saturday night-McCartney's "A Little Help From My Friends" -Taylor was telling us that friends had helped him make it out of the Village...
...Beatles' current problem is linked to a whole new direction in pop music. It has to do with a de-escalation of what might be called rock music's group consciousness and a rising enthusiasm for solo artistry. Though the other Beatles are said to disapprove of McCartney's project, in recent months John Lennon has cut four albums by himself, Harrison two and Ringo one. Obviously, as talented a composer and performer as McCartney could not sit idly by while all that was going...
...McCartney, to be released in the U.S. this week, is what used to be called a tour de force; today the phrase is "ego trip." Paul wrote all 14 songs, sings all the lead parts, plays all the instruments. In mood and style, the disk marks the same kind of return to simple pleasures, and a simple, countrified way of saying them, that characterizes Bob Dylan's recent work. One song especially, the Nashville Sounding Every Night ("Every night I just wanna stay out and be with you"), seems to be a genuine salute to Dylan's Tonight...
Overall, the new album is good McCartney-clever, varied, full of humor -but it is nothing to match his past pop classics, particularly Yesterday, Michele and Hey, Jude. His lyrics are best when least pretentious, as in Junk, a kind of sentimental word jamboree: "Bye, bye, says the sign in the shop window/ Why, Why, says the junk in the yard." Maybe I'm Amazed, however, is a pale echo of the choral sumptuousness of McCartney's The End, which served as the coda to Abbey Road, the hit 1969 Beatle album...
Anyone who reflects sadly that one Beatle is bound to be less good than four may draw some encouragement from recent history. Last year reports of Paul McCartney's death-and replacement by a double-helped stir enormous sales for Abbey Road. Reports of the Beatles' death will certainly not do McCartney -or that upcoming LP Let It Be-any harm in the world's record shops...