Business
Paul McCartney’s latest album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, enjoyed a level of pre-release hype that is largely unheard of surrounding the release of new music by legacy artists - even by Paul himself for much of his solo career - so it’s not exactly surprising that it has hit the top of the charts worldwide. It’s also not surprising that it has further cemented McCartney as the #1 selling albums artist of all time, and has been accompanied by the news that he is the first and only rock star to be a billionaire in English pounds. The pound may be sinking, as he sang on his 1982 masterpiece Tug of War, but apparently not for him.
None of this, however, is the real story.
A Whirlwind Promo Tour
The real story isn’t even that the marketing for this album has been pretty much off the charts, as Macca not only closed out the latest season of SNL and appeared on more interview shows than you can count, he ushered in the end of an era when he appeared throughout the final episode of the Late Show With Stephen Colbert, a major milestone of significant political relevance and a fond farewell not just to Colbert and the Late Show in general, but to the historic Ed Sullivan theatre - the place where the Beatles first appeared on American TV sets in 1964; one that had been lying dormant until David Letterman restored the old building when he created the Late Show decades later. And now, it is set to lay dormant once again, and having Paul McCartney there to flip the proverbial switch (or literal during the Late Show’s fantastic and fantastical finale) could not be more appropriate.
That, again, is not the real story. The real story is that for all that Paul McCartney is a living legend, enjoying a level of fame and overwhelming adoration on a level pretty much unparalleled by anyone on Earth, he hasn’t just rested on his laurels, but tapped deeply into his inner muse to release what may well be his finest work of art since Memory Almost Full in 2008, if not Chaos and Creation in the Backyard from way back in 2005.
Why It’s Great
It takes a few listens to truly appreciate, but Dungeon Lane proves itself to be both exactly what you might expect of someone in their mid 80s - reflective, nostalgic, melancholy - and what you very much might not, as energetic pop and surprisingly effective eccentric rockers sit side by side with quiet acoustic ballads and dancehall numbers that were retro even in the 1960s. Yes, his voice is far from what it was and there’s nothing here that exactly reinvents the wheel - how could it? - but it’s an astonishingly, consistently excellent listen with Macca’s unmatched melody writing abilities back in fine form after the lackluster McCartney III and with lyrics that are at times clumsy but are personal and intimate in a way that Paul seldom was in his prime years.
With a tight 40-odd minute run time stretched across the Beatles’ magic number of 14 tracks, this is an album that even with Andrew Watt’s at times overly modern production begs to be listened to on vinyl - and you have a wide range of different colored vinyls to pick from, depending on where you get your copy. McCartney himself is a big proponent of listening to his music on vinyl on the best record player you can afford and for all that the Boys of Dungeon Lane lacks the obvious organic warmth of his ‘70s records, it is an “album” in the greatest sense of the word.