Solo Beatles single by single thread

"Jenny Wren" is lovely but "Summer of '59" IMHO is one of Macca's best hidden gems in his entire career. Wonderful tune and the lyrics are pretty cool too. He should do this one live! This would have also been a great demo duet with Elvis Costello.. has that sort of vibe to it.

 

I didn't make copies, but I sure spread the word that I thought it was one of Paul's five best albums.

All these years later, I still think that.

As for the single "Jenny Wren," while I like the song, I thought it was an odd choice for a single if the goal was to get airplay (and sell copies of the single). Not every good song works as a single.

JcS

 

Summer Of '59 is fantastic. I wish it was included on the CD single as well. The way my house is set up the vinyl is in a different room from the stereo and pulling down the 7 inch boxes from the top of the shelves is a bit of a pain. I'm going to have to do a needle drop soon.

 

Thanks for posting this. I'm familiar with Jenny Wren of course, but this is my first exposure to the b-sides. They are fantastic!

Haristar, you've done an excellent job leading this thread. Thank you for your hard work and dedication.

 

"Fine Line" is a good song. However, this was the first time that I had the impression that McCartney's vocal was not so great, lacking a little energy, possibly due to the age factor.

"Jenny Wren" is a great song. I agree with those who mentioned that "This Never Happened Before" might have made the best choice for single.

 

Time Magazine's review of "Chaos..." - BeatleLinks Fab Forum

McCartney brought in a sprawling series of demos he had recorded at home; Godrich listened and announced that he would work only on the songs that interested him. "No '50s rock-'n'-roll pastiche numbers," says Godrich. "He's a jolly old soul, but I thought maybe just for once we could steer him away from those things."​

Was he talking about "Summer of '59"?

 

That's how I feel about any LPs Macca came out with after the 70s. Love the odd song here and there, but Yawn for me too!

And I luv the guy.....

 

My favorite part of that review is when Paul said about that upcoming tour for Chaos "It'll be great not to be out there with a crap album, singing songs I don't care much about."

Woah, that's blunt Paul quote there... maybe about Driving Rain?

 

Just listened to Summer of 59 for the first time. I'd like to have seen this on CHAOS. I like CHAOS OK, though not as much as some (I put it top 10, but not top 5 McCartney solo), but one of my criticisms is that it is such a keyboard and/or slower song heavy album. This song would have given both some uptempo and guitar.

 

Nice to see some of you have been so impressed with these b-sides! Summer of '59 is a sprightly little gem, sort of a distant cousin to That Was Me, though I may even prefer it to its MAF relative. And I Want You To Fly is one of the tripper numbers he's recorded in recent years - I love it! Something about Paul and "flight" ... brings out the best in him, for me, anyway (Bluebird, Blackbird, Jenny Wren, Flying To My Home, Travelling Light, etc.).

 

It was certainly released to radio as a promo single in the U.S. I don't know if it had a physical release, but it got some airplay on Triple A stations. I remember a friend in the Portland area telling me she heard it pretty regularly on a station up there.

 

Fortunately Memory Almost Full woke me up again, and not just because the CD was so g-ddamned loud; I thought it was better than Chaos And Creation on the first listen (and my opinion hasn't changed in the last ten years). I had no urge or inclination to hear Kisses On The Bottom but other than that the only McCartney albums he's put out in the last twenty years I didn't like were Driving Rain and Chaos.

 

I like Summer Of 59, just imagine that song with the full band treatment, it would rock even more.

 

On the bus on my way to work this morning, it was raining fairly hard. There were two prim elderly women sitting in the seat in front of me. When it briefly rained even harder, one looked at the other and said "Driving Rain?" and the other started laughing scornfully.

I wondered if it was possible that they were making a McCartney joke, but they didn't seem very friendly, so I was afraid to ask.

 

It's possible. Did either of them start counting nonsensically?

 

Probably a couple of Steve Hoffman forum members.

 

Old? Unfriendly? Driving Rain?

Yep, probably members of the forum!!

 

Possibly also about songs like "That Was Me". As I recall, many songs which McCartney was working on in the first set of sessions (2003) for "Memory Almost Full" were abandoned due to lack of interest on the part of Godrich, and later resumed for MAF.

 

Paul McCartney - "Dance Tonight" (2007)


B-side: Nod Your Head (Sly David Short mix)
Released: June 5, 2007
Charts: #26 (UK), #69 (US)

"Dance Tonight" is a song by Paul McCartney, the opening track to his 2007 album Memory Almost Full. The song was released as a download single in the United Kingdom on 18 June 2007, McCartney's 65th birthday.[1] A week later, the song debuted at number 34 in the UK Singles Chart. The UK single was also issued as a picture disc that came in a plastic sleeve with a cardboard insert. On 1 July, the song peaked at number 26 in the UK charts.[2][3] This is the final single of McCartney's to date to have charted in the UK top 75. The song was also nominated for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the 2008 Grammy Awards.

"Dance Tonight" was recorded in January–February 2007 at RAK Studios in London, with McCartney playing mandolin, electric guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, percussion and autoharp.[7]

In the United States, it was released as the second single from the album. The song also debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 69.[4][5] It marked McCartney's final appearance in the Hot 100 until 2015.

McCartney performed the song live as a duet with Australian singer Kylie Minogue on Jools Holland's 2007 New Year's Eve television special Hootenanny.

The song was recently used on PBS network Thirteen, advertising its May 2013 lineup.

The left-handed mandolin used for the song, shown delivered to him by mail in the music video, was purchased by McCartney from a guitar shop he frequents in London.[6]Whenever he would play the mandolin, his three-year-old daughter Beatrice would be moved to dance, after which McCartney states that the song "wrote itself". It was the last song recorded for the album, and was included on the album at the last minute.[1]

The song is also included in an iPod + iTunes advertisement featuring a black and white McCartney walking down a colourful, animated street while performing the song. It saw frequent airplay in summer 2007.

 

Dance Tonight has grown on me over the years. I didn't think much of it at the time, but now I enjoy it for the most part. It's still not something I seek out. It was nice to hear McCartney not sounding like he wanted to end it all again. (Ever Present Past was first here, so that was my first exposure to "out of the woods" Paul).

Never heard this specific mix of Nod Your Head, and it doesn't seem to be available on Spotify here, but in general Nod Your Head gets a lot of hate around here that I don't fully understand. It sounds like a studio warm up jam that he fleshed out a little. I think it's interesting and it's not sung any worse than anything else from this period. Feels like something we'd cherish if it had come 20 or 30 years earlier and we'd discovered it on some boot, then we'd be pissed when it was a download-only track on the Archive Edition.

 

I hate "Dance Tonight." It's so lazy. If anybody not named McCartney tried to pass this off as a single it would have been laughed at by every label in the world.

I thought MAF was pretty good. But unlike Chaos which was really consistent the lows on MAF were really low. But the highs were good (good highs).

 

I liked Dance Tonight a lot when it first came out, but I don't think it aged well. As ampmods says, it's lazy. Pleasant enough, but Paul should have put a bit more effort into the chorus melody. I like the MAF album version of Nod Your Head - never heard this remix.

 

I've always liked "Dance Tonight". I remember it being played a lot at the time.

Yes it's hardly the most profound of songs but it's enjoyable enough.

 

I think Dance Tonight was a perfect album opener – short, sweet, and nonsensical – but wasn't the best choice for lead single, or for a single at all.

 

I like "Dance Tonight" as album opener although it doesn't sound as a strong single contender.

Also like "Nod Your Head" -- it's energetic and fun.