Political Bass: The Legacy of Paul McCartney's Message Songs
If anyone still needed a primer on Paul McCartney 60 years after he, John, and George laid down their first tracks, this month’s Egypt Station, the 18th and latest studio album of McCartney’s solo career, wouldn’t be a bad pick for a first listen. At 76, McCartney has finally let himself go gray, but he’s never needed dye to seem younger than his years; more than a decade after recording his own elegy, he’s active, vital, and viral, flitting from Fallon to Maron and selling out a stadium somewhere near you. On his first studio release in five years, and his first ever to debut at no. 1 on the Billboard chart, he’s similarly restless and, worn voice aside, resisting senescence: Except for his classical records and his collaborations with Youth, it’s his second-longest non-soundtrack album (after 2001’s Driving Rain), and it features two tracks that fall somewhere on the thirstiness scale between “Press” and “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?,” which could have been embarrassing if both the songs and the singer weren’t so silly and infectiously fun.If anyone still needed a primer on Paul McCartney 60 years after he, John, and George laid down their first tracks, this month’s Egypt Station, the 18th and latest studio album of McCartney’s solo career, wouldn’t be a bad pick for a first listen.
Source: Ben Lindbergh/theringer.com
