Why did P. McCartney last 19 years longer on UK top 40 vs USA

showtaper · Jul 17, 2017

In the US McCartney is a touring "oldies" act for the young, and a feel good connection
with the past for us old codgers. His post-Beatles breakup success was a carry over from the
rather popular band he was in and that goodwill ship has sailed.

Please don't shed too many tears for him, he's doing just fine........

(I really don't mean this to sound harsh - I'm a little short on sleep and coffee this morning)

wildstar · Jul 17, 2017

skyjelly said: ↑

He co-wrote and performed on it, so I count it. I bet Paul counts it, too! In fact, I bet half the reason he worked with Kanye and Rihanna was to practically guarantee himself a hit in the 2010's and raise his profile in the youth market. I'm not being critical of him, if that's the case. Why wouldn't he want to be relevant in today's music scene, and not simply ride off into the sunset as a 'nostalgia act" or a "living legend"?
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ONLY half the reason?

jwb1231970 · Jul 17, 2017

showtaper said: ↑

In the US McCartney is a touring "oldies" act for the young, and a feel good connection
with the past for us old codgers. His post-Beatles breakup success was a carry over from the
rather popular band he was in and that goodwill ship has sailed.

Please don't shed too many tears for him, he's doing just fine........

(I really don't mean this to sound harsh - I'm a little short on sleep and coffee this morning)
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True but The Beach Boys are an oldies act, Paul's audience I believe know who he is when they come to the show...BBs could have stand ins for mike and Bruce and I think 80 percent of the audience wouldn't know better

yellowballoon · Jul 17, 2017

skyjelly said: ↑

Are people not counting "FourFiveSeconds" from 2015? Top 10 in the US and UK.
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I have completely wiped this one from my memory and less said the better.

foxylady · Jul 17, 2017

yellowballoon said: ↑

I have completely wiped this one from my memory and less said the better.
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Ha, ha, he probably did that to impress his youngest daughter.

2141 · Jul 17, 2017

Gaslight said: ↑

Changing musical tastes. Starting with hip hop / dance music, most likely.

Plus likely differences in marketing, between the US and elsewhere.
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Exactly. In the US hip-hop/dance music and similar sounds have had a big impact on the charts for at least the last two decades. Rap is huge and needless to say, Paul doesn't exactly fit that demographic. The only other comparable trend would be Country Music, which is huge as well. There again, McCartney loses out. Notice he did manage to score (somewhat) riding with Kanye and Rihanna on that FourFiveSeconds single. I think the demographic changes in the US are the biggest reason for Paul's record selling slump here. Even so, he still does just fine live.

Zeki · Jul 17, 2017

He's played FourFiveSeconds 55 times live, so it's pretty evident he counts it.

Rihanna has performed it 75 times and Kanye only 11 (or 12).

Purple Jim · Jul 17, 2017

He's a national treasure, that's why!

AppleCorp3 · Jul 20, 2017

jgkojak said: ↑

A few less technical issues:

1) As a home country hero, he was more celebrated at the time in the UK, where he continued to have hits (Cliff Richard, who never really caught on in the US, had a similar experience)

2) European charts were less influenced by MTV and by corporate/narrow-formatted radio programmers.

3) European/UK record-buyers were more eclectic in their tastes.

4) UK is a smaller market, so the number of sales needed for the fans to make an automatic chart impact is lower - so a "This One" single bought only by fans is good for the #80s in the U.S. and #18 in the U.K.

And a more technical issue:

5) Paul did not manage the post mid-80s U.S. radio formats and release schedules well.

For example, "Spies Like Us" (I like it as a Paul fan but come on, its not a great song) in late 1985, I believe sucked up all the radio good will whatever the next Paul releases would generate. Had Spies not been released and instead "Press" in Sept. 1986 was Paul's next new release, I believe Press would have generated enough buzz and interest to break the Top 10 (as Spies did).

Likewise, both Spies and Press occupied that difficult middle ground between rock and Adult Contemporary pop. Paul's last several non-superstar-duet hits in the US (No More Lonely Nights, a genuinely great ballad), Take It Away (a made for AC/MOR pop record, and again one of Paul's best), could easily be played on both Adult Contemporary stations and pop stations. Those two songs also happen to be amazingly produced/written/crafted pop gems - but note that even putting out his BEST stuff, Paul could manage #10 with Take It Away and #6 with No More Lonely Nights.

Spies Like Us is too heavy/hard to receive much if any AC airplay. And its too pop for classic rock radio. Press, likewise, was not an easy fit for AC stations at the time (to its credit, its got an edgier sound and production) and no rock station was going to play it (unlike, say, Tom Petty or George Harrison, who got support from both rock and pop radio for their hits of the time). By the time the well-positioned sound-wise singles from Flowers in the Dirt came out, pop, MTV and radio had moved on.

Fast Forward to 2007. The general practice at the time was to create buzz then release a single to generate maximum sales to land a high Billboard debut. Instead, Paul released Memory Almost Full and waited two weeks (or more) to release the single, pretty much killing it in the #60s on the chart - had Paul released Dance Tonight in advance of the record, enough downloads and physical sales would have likely generated a deserved Top 40 placement for the song. (I know the idea is to move albums and make money from them - but I think it may have been just as important to Paul to have that hit). Likewise, I think Dance Tonight, if it got some T40 rotation, could have been a surprise grower and give Paul a surprise final Top 10 in the U.S.

Hope of Deliverance is the best example, kind of a 1990s Mull of Kintyre- when I first heard it in 1993, I loved it but thought "no way this is charting high". Yet it hit Top 5 or #1 all over the world. This is just a plain lack of imagination on the part of U.S. radio programmers.

A final note on MTV - for the most part, I don't like Paul's videos.

His early efforts - Coming Up (groundbreaking), Take It Away (fun), Pipes of Peace (groundbreaking), and even the movie-clip heavy No More Lonely Nights and Spies Like Us (with Akroyd and Chase for star power) were great.

But after that:
Press, mugging in the subway station, was average at a time when Peter Gabriel was doing Sledgehammer and Phill Collins was producing mini-epic after mini-epic.

My Brave Face was borderline racist and seemed to remind people the wrong way Paul was a Beatle. This One was better, but the song didn't get enough attention.

Hope of Deliverance is a goofy forest sing-along. And the less said about Young Boy and The World Tonight the better.

So whatever assistance Paul may have received from heavy MTV play 1986-1997 was lost on the poor videos.

Witness George Harrison's funny Got My Mind Set on You and When We Was Fab, the latter especially not what you would expect MTV to play, as a way to generate a hit out of a good video.

Had Paul taken the budget for Broad Street and used it to produce 5 killer music videos for his next project (Press) he would have been better off.
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Glad you brought it up - Mo More Lonely Nights has always been a favorite of mine. It's the Best way to watch the Broadstreet movie!

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Why did P. McCartney last 19 years longer on UK top 40 vs USA

showtaper Concert Hoarding Bastard

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