C/D Paul McCartney Solo

"Jet"

"Junior's Farm"

"Listen to What the Man Said"

otherwise, it's shit.

I like 'jet' and the start of 'C moon' and I like 'maybe I'm amazed' and 'no more lonely nights' and 'silly love songs'!!!

It's an odd collection because it is missing some good bits ("Maybe I'm Amazed" "Helen Wheels" "Take it Away"). I'll probably just end up getting his lps eventually, like I usually do with artist I admire (sigh).

-- Alex in NYC

There's no difference!! Paul was the, what do you say, "auteur"...

Paul McCartney is one of those artists that I bet there's a potential CD-R or two's worth of stuff I would absolutely adore - really he needs to be a lot more obscure than he is, so some loving curator could trawl through his albums and B-Sides and make some selections. As it is his commercial/historical clout means the available compilations take the path of least resistance a bit too much.

Beatles beat the rest hands-down - that much we know. Beyond that, RJG is probably right. But the best post-Beatles Macca I know is VENUS & MARS - a bit of a 70s masterpiece. TUG OF WAR also has great stuff; his work with Costello has its moments; and so does the FLAMING PIE LP (1997).

I did the CDR thing with McCartneys back catalogue a year or two ago and managed to get 4 really good chronological comps. I would guess that a lot of people would like much of this stuff if they sat down and listened to it. McCartney solo though is almost dismissed and I don't think that the Wingspan comp kicked off the resurection of the post Beatles stuff that I or probably he expected.

What I really can't get over is the fact that Paul himself doesn't realise how rubbish he is nowadays. Wake up!

He really seems to think his solo work is comparable to the Beatles. It's not. Maybe it was always going to be a dissapointment by the Beatles standards, but by _any_ standards it's awful. And still he doesn't get it.

Maybe if we all stood outside his house with placards saying "Paul, your music is now shit!" he'd get it. But I doubt it. He'd probably think "Hey those guys have spelled 'hit' wrong".

Dud.

Favourite videos: Goodnight Tonight, Pipes of Peace.

Also C: "Jet," "Too Many People," "Let Me Roll It," "Spin It On" (Wings go thrash!)

good old dad.

I don't think I've even seen a copy of WINGSPAN in a record store.

I reminded my dad about the 'all the best'-for-christmas thing on friday night when we were in a car. he didn't really remember. he said "and why did she [my mum] buy you that instead?" and I told him again and he understood. then he asked "and why did you want 'faith'??" and the answer was...I was six...I had seen it advertised on television.

Yes, COMING UP is great.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316860328/qid=1045408789/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_3_1/026-5101041-0610836

It's an intimate scrapbook.

Capitals are the new italics.

If that's not a special offer I'll EAT MY HAT. Note controversial opinion expressed herein: the best solo Paul McCartney work did not appear until FLOWERS IN THE DIRT. Before anyone rushes to order it, please note that it appears to be two-dimensional.

I used to listen to my mum's copy of "All The Best" all the time. On vinyl, too.

amazing.

Love Coming Up and C Moon too.

And then I wake up.

I had "All the best" on CD for many years, never listened to it, but I'll agree that "Venus and Mars" is a neglected classic, as is the first McCartney LP, very primitive but rather homely.

I had dreams about WINGSPAN last night. or it featured in my last night's dreams. I think it was really big and cost one hundred and twenty-five pounds or twenty-five pounds and was sealed in plastic and didn't tell me the tracklisting.

record shopping w/ allyC, yesterday, we saw many mccartney/wings albums. WINGS AT THE SPEED OF SOUND looked OK but was on cassette and three pounds fifty.

this is better than I expected

I can't stand that Andrew Watt glaze though.

Ugh it’s elder abuse at this point!

kids used to kick a ball in the alley

oh no they made two members of the beatles (notoriously hate singing) sing a song together :(

Watt does terribly on the Stones songs (which aren't very good to begin with) and at first here I was thinking 'oh god Ringo's final drumming will be marred with this fucking drum sound' but I got over it pretty quickly; I don't think he's too intrusive here.

production is unlistenable, christ

Is that a new Oasis song?

Beginning to suspect that Andrew Watt is actually a semi-convincing avatar for AI production software - the song he did with Morrissey was exactly like what Suno or whatever would chuck out if you asked it to produce a Smiths song, with AI compression, autontune and general production values.

It foes soubd like Oasis

Jagger raves about Watt because he knows "thousands" of songs and can jam with them, so I'm fairly certain Watt's AI.

Beginning to suspect that Andrew Watt is actually a semi-convincing avatar for AI production software - the song he did with Morrissey was exactly like what Suno or whatever would chuck out if you asked it to produce a Smiths song, with AI compression, autontune and general production values.

― Maggy Scraggle, Tuesday, May 12, 2026 7:54 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

The entire Iggy Pop record he did sounds like AI-Iggy

Xps grrr sorry for typos. For some reason they're worse when I post to ilx

Watt can fix the typos.

I don't hate Watt as much as everyone else, but he does have a heavy stamp and everything he has worked on that I've heard sounds over produced in the kind of way Mutt Lang's stuff is over produced. There's a kind of swirly sheen over everything on this song that I think is obviously working to address and smoothe over shakiness in the vocals. I'm not sure it would sound any better without those corrective measures though.

watt would be tolerable (if bland) if he didn't reliably do what he does to the vocals, that sounds so bad

Seriously. The Macca/Ringo duet is so pitch corrected it sounds like it was sung by the animatronic presidents at Disneyland.

it's not just the pitch correction, the vocals always end up kinda buried in the mix to try to disguise the flaws i guess? it just results in them sounding garbled, especially because everything else is so polished and clean

i thought i was listening to the wrong tune, i can’t even really hear ringo?

That's because Bernard Purdie sang over him.

🥁

ringo and paul sound very alike in this, which I attribute to whatever processing he's throwing on their voices

I can't hear Ringo either

(though, also, Paul's voice has gotten worse so it's maybe also the case that Paul kind of now sounds like Ringo)

Ringo sings the second line: "and you can be forgiven if you thought that it was rough"

i thought i was listening to the wrong tune, i can’t even really hear ringo?

Or Paul.

somewhere George is cackling, short of breath.

what production style would we prefer in this era from Paul? woolly home recordings on a tascam? raw/confessional Rick Rubin thing? stately Elvis Costello collab?

Yes, yes, and yes!

Paul is a pretty good producer in his own right. He produced himself during his gravy period.

if watt just produced the vocals in a remotely normal way instead of putting this garbling sheen on everything it'd be fine. i certainly don't believe that mccartney's voice has deteriorated so much that this was the only way to get a usable vocal take, especially not when watt does this same thing on that morrissey track

lol this really does sound like oasis

if mccartney's going to do some vague throwback sound he could do a lot better. bring back paul mccartney, disco bassist

^this!

Took me a few listens, but I like this one well enough. Sounds like a Rutles song! And a good one! I think the range is mostly D3 to D4. Paul does hit one F# above that near the end. I kind of imagine he can hit the notes in that octave fairly well. If I'm missing sonic cues suggesting pitch correction, I'd be interested to know what those are.

Kind of think this one could work well in the context of the album, too (with its thematic element), so hopeful on that.

Sounds like a Rutles song!

ha, otm.

not sure what you guys who can't hear ringo aren't hearing -- his voice is super clear to me, even if age and vocal processing has brought him and paul a little closer together in timbre than they used to be.

harmonies sometimes veer close to jeff lynne/elo territory (e.g. on the line "we didn't worry where the road was going to lead us to").

Dirk and Barry!

Shocked and stunned

Listening now. Yeah, it does sound like something off of Archaeology.

even comparing the Watt to Mutt Lange is so out of line, super insulting to Lange.Watt's productions sound like AI.

yeah I don't at all hear Mutt in this sheen.

brian johnson fed through the watt vocal garbler is a terrifying idea

this is well off-topic but i just learned that the watt-produced morrissey track is from the unreleased album he recorded with basically the red hot chili peppers which makes it so much funnier

I will say Home to Us is very catchy and memorable, usually I get through his new stuff and couldn't remember a note when I'm done.

does Ringo play drums on it?

I believe so, yeah.

The vocal processing is odd but the song is lovely!

The vocals on Ringo's drums were processed too.

Should really have got Pete Best in to play the drums.

Swirls like a 64kbps mp3 file but the song Is charming doggerel. I think Watt has a sound which simulates pop sheen when filtered by octogenarian ears.

Just today I got a substack alert about a Pete Best story.

My feeling about the production is that it has charm but also feels a little generic. I don't hear it as sheen. There are at least three rhythm guitars, probably more. I kind of like the treatment of the backing vocals, although if you're going to have Chrissie Hynde, it would be nice to be able to pick her voice out.