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| rev10 = ''[[Uncut (magazine)|Uncut]]''
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| rev10score = 9/10<ref name="uncut">{{cite web |url=https://i.redd.it/iqsrz5byxuy51.jpg |title=McCartney III – Uncut Magazine Review |work=[[Uncut (magazine)|Uncut]]| last= Robinson |first= John |date= 12 November 2020 |accessdate= 17 December 2020}}</ref>
| rev10score = {{rating|4.5|5}}<ref name="uncut">{{cite web |url=https://www.uncut.co.uk/reviews/album/paul-mccartney-mccartney-iii-128984/ |title=Paul McCartney – McCartney III |work=[[Uncut (magazine)|Uncut]]| last= Robinson |first= John |date= 18 December 2020 |accessdate= 23 December 2020}}</ref>
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Revision as of 14:46, 23 December 2020

McCartney III
Studio album by
Paul McCartney
Released18 December 2020[1]
Recorded3 September 1992[2]
2020 (during lockdown)[3][4]
StudioHogg Hill Mill, Sussex, England
GenreRock
Length44:48
LabelCapitol
ProducerPaul McCartney[5]
Paul McCartney chronology
Amoeba Gig
(2019) 		McCartney III
(2020)
Paul McCartney studio album chronology
Egypt Station
(2018) 		McCartney III
(2020)
Singles from McCartney III
  1. "Find My Way"
    Released: 18 December 2020

McCartney III is the 18th solo album by English musician Paul McCartney, released on 18 December 2020 by Capitol Records.[6] It serves as a continuation to his two eponymous solo albums, McCartney (1970) and McCartney II (1980). Like those albums, McCartney III features McCartney on all instruments. The album was met with widespread acclaim from music critics.

Background

McCartney III was recorded in early 2020 in Sussex, England at McCartney's home while in lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic.[7] Describing the process of recording the album, McCartney said: "Each day I’d start recording with the instrument I wrote the song on and then gradually layer it all up; it was a lot of fun. It was about making music for yourself rather than making music that has to do a job. So, I just did stuff I fancied doing. I had no idea this would end up as an album."[8]

Like previous McCartney albums, the instrumental work is recorded by McCartney himself.[3] He similarly performed most of the instruments on his 2005 album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (described at the time by journalist David Hajdu as being "essentially, McCartney III"[9]) and on his 2007 album Memory Almost Full. McCartney also played all the instruments himself on Rushes and Electric Arguments under the name The Fireman.[10]

The album's cover art and typography was designed by artist Ed Ruscha,[11] an acquaintance of the McCartney family.[12]

Promotion

The domain name mccartneyiii.com was registered on 28 August 2020 by CSC Corporate Domains, the company that previously registered paulmccartney.com and flaming-pie.com (for the reissue of Flaming Pie, McCartney's 1997 studio album). Its landing page originally appeared with a 303 error notice, instead of the usual 404 error notice.[13]

On Friday, 16 October, teasers for the album started appearing on Spotify with animations over the artwork for McCartney and McCartney II showing a dice with three pips facing upwards. The following week, Paul McCartney's Twitter account started posting photos at 33 minutes past the hour with a recurring motif of three.[6] On 21 October, McCartney's social media channels officially announced the forthcoming release of the album on 11 December.[14] On 19 November, it was announced that due to unforeseeable production delays, the album release date had to be moved back one week to 18 December.[1]

Starting from 4 December 2020, McCartney sent via his Facebook page the first post of a series of 12 daily posts unveiling the titles of each of the 11 new tracks from his new album through murals painted in 12 different cities all over the world.[nb 1] Each mural is showing the title of a new track, an excerpt from its music score and its author (Paul McCartney) along with the album title and its release date.[15] McCartney also asked all musicians to post their video covers of his 11 new songs through his special website #12DaysOfPaul.[16]

During his appearance on The Howard Stern Show on 15 December 2020, McCartney revealed that American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift originally decided to postpone the release of her album Evermore by one week to respect the original 11 December release date of his album. Upon learning this, McCartney decided to release his album on 18 December instead so that Swift could move forward with the rollout of Evermore as initially planned.[17]

On 17 December, a day before the album release, two live appearances were confirmed for that day: one on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and a YouTube Released special featuring Chris Rock, alongside the release date for the lead single "Find My Way", which was released at the same time as the album.[18]

Release

McCartney III was released on 18 December 2020 on CD, vinyl, cassette and digital formats. The vinyl editions include a variety of colors: standard black, Third Man Records exclusive yellow-with-black-dots limited to 333 copies,[19] Third Man Records exclusive red limited to 3,000 copies,[20] #SpotifyFansFirst 130g Coke-bottle clear vinyl limited to 3,000 copies worldwide,[21] 130g yellow limited to 3,000 copies worldwide,[22] 130g violet limited to 3,000 copies worldwide,[23] Newbury Comics exclusive pink limited to 1,500 copies,[24] Target exclusive green,[19] uDiscover exclusive orange,[25] selected retailers exclusive blue,[26][27] other record stores exclusive white.[19]

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
AnyDecentMusic?7.6/10[28]
Metacritic82/100[29]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[30]
The A.V. ClubB[31]
Entertainment WeeklyB[32]
The Guardian[33]
The Independent[34]
NME[35]
Rolling Stone[36]
The Telegraph[37]
The Times[38]
Uncut[39]

McCartney III was met with widespread critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album has an average score of 82, based on 18 reviews, indicating “universal acclaim”.[29] Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave it 7.6 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus.[28] Publications such as The Guardian,[33] The Independent,[34] and Rolling Stone[36] have all given the album a score of 8/10 or 4/5.

Track listing

All tracks are written by Paul McCartney

McCartney III – Standard edition
No.TitleLength
1."Long Tailed Winter Bird"5:16
2."Find My Way"3:54
3."Pretty Boys"3:00
4."Women and Wives"2:52
5."Lavatory Lil"2:22
6."Deep Deep Feeling"8:25
7."Slidin'"3:23
8."The Kiss of Venus"3:06
9."Seize the Day"3:20
10."Deep Down"5:52
11."Winter Bird / When Winter Comes"3:12
Total length:44:48
McCartney III – Japanese and Deluxe digital editions
No.TitleLength
12."Women and Wives" (Studio Outtake)3:15
13."Lavatory Lil" (Studio Outtake)2:06
14."The Kiss of Venus" (Phone Demo)2:10
15."Slidin'" (Düsseldorf Jam)4:58
Total length:57:17

McCartney III – Vinyl edition

Side A
No.TitleLength
1."Long Tailed Winter Bird"5:16
2."Find My Way"3:54
3."Pretty Boys"3:00
4."Women and Wives"2:52
5."Lavatory Lil"2:22
6."Slidin'"3:23
Total length:20:47
Side B
No.TitleLength
1."Deep Deep Feeling"8:25
2."The Kiss of Venus"3:06
3."Seize the Day"3:20
4."Deep Down"5:52
5."Winter Bird / When Winter Comes"3:12
Total length:23:55

Personnel

Sources[3][40]

Musicians

Production

Artwork

  • Ed Ruscha – cover art and typography
  • Mary McCartney – cover portrait, photography
  • Sonny McCartney – photography
  • Nick Steinhardt – art direction and design
  • Brian Clarke – stained glass

Notes

  1. ^ London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Sydney, Toronto, Berlin, New York City, Tokyo, Chicago, Paris, Rio, Liverpool.

References

  1. ^ a b McCartney's Facebook page > 19 November 2020 post
  2. ^ The Paul McCartney Project > When Winter Comes (Written by Paul McCartney)
  3. ^ a b c "'It's just me': an exclusive interview with Paul McCartney about McCartney III". Loud and Quiet. 21 October 2020. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  4. ^ Beaumont-Thomas, Ben (21 October 2020). "Paul McCartney to release new album recorded alone in lockdown". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  5. ^ Martoccio, Angie (21 October 2020). "Paul McCartney Announces New Album, 'McCartney III'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  6. ^ a b Willman, Chris (20 October 2020). "Paul McCartney Teases a 'McCartney III' Album on the Way". Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  7. ^ Minsker, Evan (21 October 2020). "Paul McCartney Announces New Album McCartney III". Pitchfork. Retrieved 22 October 2020.
  8. ^ "Watch the trailer for the new Paul McCartney album". Louder. 21 October 2020. Retrieved 22 October 2020.
  9. ^ Hajdu, David (25 December 2005). "McCartney III". The New Republic. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
  10. ^ https://www.the-paulmccartney-project.com/
  11. ^ Staff. "McCartney III - The New Studio Album Out December 11". paulmccartney.com. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
  12. ^ Bray, Elisa. "Paintings On The Wall - Ed Ruscha". paulmccartney.com. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
  13. ^ Chadwick, Jonathan (19 October 2020). "NEWS: McCartney III: Web teasers hint at a new Paul McCartney album recorded in lockdown". Retrieved 22 October 2020.
  14. ^ @PaulMcCartney (21 October 2020). "Paul McCartney on Twitter: McCartney III. The new album, out December 11th 🎲 Pre-order: https://PaulMcCartney.lnk.to/McCartney3" (Tweet). Retrieved 23 October 2020 – via Twitter.
  15. ^ Paul McCartney's Facebook page > #12DaysOfPaul post on 4 December 2020
  16. ^ 12days.mccartneyiii.com
  17. ^ Kaufman, Gil (15 December 2020). "Of Course Sir Paul McCartney Knew Taylor Swift Had a Second Album Coming". Billboard. Archived from the original on 15 December 2020. Retrieved 15 December 2020.
  18. ^ "'Twas the night before #McCartneyIII... With one day to go, here's where you can catch Paul today!".
  19. ^ a b c Sinclaire, Paul (21 October 2020). "Paul McCartney / McCartney III: official details of Paul's new solo album". superdeluxeedition.com. Retrieved 22 October 2020.
  20. ^ "McCartney III – Exclusive Third Man Records Version Red LP". paulmccartney.com. Retrieved 22 October 2020.
  21. ^ "McCartney III – Spotify Exclusive LP". paulmccartney.com. Retrieved 22 October 2020.
  22. ^ "McCartney III – Exclusive Yellow LP". paulmccartney.com. Retrieved 7 December 2020.
  23. ^ "McCartney III – Exclusive Violet LP". paulmccartney.com. Retrieved 10 December 2020.
  24. ^ "McCartney III Exclusive LP". newburycomics.com. Retrieved 22 October 2020.
  25. ^ "McCartney III - UDiscover Exclusive Orange Vinyl". udiscovermusic.com. Retrieved 24 November 2020.
  26. ^ "McCartney III (hmv Exclusive) Blue Vinyl". hmv.com. Retrieved 22 October 2020.
  27. ^ "McCartney III (Opaque Blue Vinyl) (Limited Edition) (in Deutschland/Österreich/Schweiz exklusiv für jpc!)". jpc.de. Retrieved 22 October 2020.
  28. ^ a b "McCartney III by Paul McCartney reviews". AnyDecentMusic?. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
  29. ^ a b "Critic Reviews for McCartney III". Metacritic. Retrieved 15 December 2020.
  30. ^ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (18 December 2020). "McCartney III - Paul McCartney". AllMusic. Archived from the original on 18 December 2020. Retrieved 18 December 2020. {{cite web}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 12 December 2020 suggested (help)
  31. ^ Ihnat, Gwen (25 November 2020). "Paul McCartney's McCartney III offers lessons from a legendary life". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 11 December 2020.
  32. ^ Suskind, Alex (9 December 2020). "'McCartney III' feels like comfort food". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 11 December 2020.
  33. ^ a b Petridis, Alexis (10 December 2020). "Alexis Petridis's album of the week - Paul McCartney: McCartney III review – lockdown LP has his best songs in years". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 December 2020.
  34. ^ a b "Craftsmanship and optimism make Paul McCartney's new solo album a real treat – review". The Independent. 17 December 2020. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
  35. ^ Beaumont, Mark (15 December 2020). "Paul McCartney – 'McCartney III' review: an unpredictable quest of musical evolution". NME. Retrieved 15 December 2020.
  36. ^ a b Sheffield, Rob (17 December 2020). "Paul McCartney Delivers a Playful Gem with 'McCartney III'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
  37. ^ McCormick, Neil (11 December 2020). "Paul McCartney, McCartney III, review: the whimsical, poppy antidote to a miserable year". The Telegraph. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  38. ^ Hodgkinson, Will (8 December 2020). "Paul McCartney: McCartney III review – loose songs that tumble with feeling and sincerity". The Times. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  39. ^ Robinson, John (18 December 2020). "Paul McCartney – McCartney III". Uncut. Retrieved 23 December 2020.
  40. ^ "Credits from 'McCartney III' booklet". Retrieved 18 December 2020 – via Twitter.
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