Ouch! Thanks for the conformation. For now, until I possibly get a play copy of this, my ignorance with be bliss! I'm amazed how some maintain there is absolutely NO difference in sound, citing specs rather than sonics. Possibly a case of "fake audio". Thank you, but I'll have to trust my unsophisticated ears and leave the rest to the same "experts", some of whom also vehemently maintain there is no sonic difference between cds and lps.
I stayed a couple of weeks away from it around Christmas and now I'm listening to it everyday again. Can't wait to have it on vinyl.
I did a comparison of the regular CD compared to the Japanese SHM CD (completely coincidentally as I see it's being discussed above!).
So... I've had a very unique experience with this album. (I apologize in advance for the very long post...) At the beginning of 2020, I had vowed to start making thorough demos of some new songs I've written. I've been writing over the past few years, but not really making actual demos to flesh out the songs. My collaborator and I have been letting our lives get in the way of writing/recording/releasing new music. So I was doing this to send to him to listen to and decide if he liked them enough for us to rewrite together and record for a new project. It's been too long. The idea was just to spend some of my free time cranking them out one at a time. But by the time the first four were done, the pandemic had set in. So I took on a huge handful more songs and started recording all of them, figuring I'd be home for a while. By June I had recorded 22 basic tracks and with no sign of the pandemic slowing down, I figured I'd make it into an unofficial album. The thing is not only was I writing all the music & lyrics by myself, I was playing all the guitars, basses, keyboards, drums, percussion, banjo, mandolin, ukulele, etc. myself. (I like to use real instruments, not program drums and stuff) I also did all the vocals, arranging, engineering, mixing and mastering myself, with very little exception. - I don't really like singing THAT much and I don't always love writing lyrics. But it became a nice challenge and actually something I always wanted to do. And I'd like to add my songs/demos are always pretty dense. Very layered, maybe too much for some people, but I like it. I have a lot of ideas! Anyway, by the time December rolled around I was really sick of all the songs and I just wanted to get them done. All the music had been recorded and I was stuck recording tons of layers of harmonies, backing & lead vocals. - I was eagerly awaiting McCartney III, but I was obsessed with getting my album done so I could move on. I had the fortune of hearing all of McCartney III before release date and really liked what I heard. (In fact I'm sure somewhere in this thread I posted my brief review). I was excited to officially get the official album and listen to it, which I did. But I was so overwhelmed with my own project I did not listen to it nearly as much as I have every other new McCartney album I bought (my first 'new' McCartney release that I bought on my own... with my parents money... was McCartney II and purchased every single one since then on release date or at least release week). By December 24th, I finished the last overdubs for my album, but I still had to finish up mixing. (22 tracks, 3 or which are short 'link' tracks, is a lot, the album is an hour & 14 minutes total). I had the mixing finished by January 5th and wanted to master it, because by this time, I realized I was actually going to release this thing on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, etc. But not really promote it because we are going to redo songs for the band later this year. I figured I put the time into it and I wanted friends and family to be able to listen to it easily. So after I got the mastering done, I got the credits/samples, etc. ready and finally released on the 12th. All this time, I've been thinking of all the other music I want to listen to more in depth. McCartney III was very high on the list, but I was feeling a lack of excitement to do so, which kind of worried me. Parts of the album have been stuck in my head and for the first time ever with a McCartney album, I just wasn't that excited to get back to it. I put it on the other day and I was absolutely thrilled with how into it I was after all of that. I think, probably because of the relief of having my own album done, I was able to just take it in and hear how many things I love about it. - Most McCartney albums will have at least one track that I absolutely love, you know a 5 star all-time favorite track, but some will not have an a track like that, but I'll love the album because several tracks (or the whole thing) will be just a shade under that. - This is one that I don't think I have that one amazing track for me, but still absolutely love those first 3 songs and "Deep Deep Feeling". The only track that I don't totally love is "Seize the Day", which I understand a lot of people love. I think it's a good song, but it doesn't really do it for me. "Women and Wives" is also one that I think is a great composition but doesn't hit the spot for me as far as a recording/performance. I could be critical about other things like that on the album, as you always can with any album, but I think what McCartney was going for and how he did this, was a success. And it's absolutely mind boggling to think of how this man has never stopped doing this, no matter what anyone actually thinks of the quality of his songs or his performance, it is an amazing accomplishment. I also think that this, in a good way, is kind of the least overall commercial McCartney album in a really long time. I know people would say since Electric Arguments, but I felt that album was 'underground commercial', and I think the praise that album got at the time and still gets, supports that.
Reminds me of when Egypt Station had just been released. In the comments section for the "Fuh You" video someone said she was kind of shocked to hear cute ol' Paul almost using the f-word in a song. I directed her to listen to "Big Boys Bickering"....
I had high hopes for McCartney 3 and expected it to do very well on the charts but am saddened to see that it slipped down to the bottom of Billboard's Top 200 album chart after only 4 weeks. I can't believe that with many of us buying multiple color vinyl variants it should have given the album more staying power on the charts but instead it dropped like a stone.
Guess I'm not "most people" then, I still love this album even more than a month ago, actually. Since it was released, it's been spinning every single day here.
Not me, I've listened to at least a couple of songs from it every day. It will end up in my top 10 Paul albums.
Guess someone is color blind. How difficult is it to match fabric colors? - Or at least get them in the ball park. This is the various versions of the color yellow and a very dark color blue compared to what was listed at the P.M sites. The blue was almost a light powder blue. Only the yellow mask matches what was depicted in the site listing. The rest is various shades of orange. Blue was my favorite, but this is so dark it is hard to see the logo art. Even darker than pictured here. These are from the U.K. site. But it appears that the U.S. ones are essentially the same. Curious. Turns out white was the only color they couldn't mess up! U.K. order finally arrived. It was advertised as coming in a "box set" (even though it wasn't pictured). No bigger white box for this yellow U.K bundle. Only severely smashed shipping boxes.
But we all bought the various color editions prior to or during the very first week of sales. So unless we all kept buying more and more color-vinyl editions week after week, there was no way that the album could have any staying power on the charts. Nowadays, it is quick in and quick out. (Watch it! No jokes!!)
i think it has a couple good tracks, but overall it's not that great of an album. i had much higher hopes. then again, i don't have "macca" as my avatar, nor do i have a signature line/quote related to him.
Hey, I'd love to hear your album. I had a similar story during 2020 but with a tragic ending. I hadn't done any music since my mother discovered a brain cancer in 2017 and, to cut a very long story short, became my daughter. Me and my younger brother nursed her for three years and during this period I had no energy left for anything else. Then in December of 2019 I found myself writing lyrics. I wrote a lot of stuff. It was a theraphy; my feelings and thoughts about my dissolving family. By March 2020 I started putting music to them as well as recording the basic tracks whenever I had some time to rest. In four months I had composed, arranged and recorded the backing tracks for 11 songs and had 5 others to start working on. On August 04th my mother died while sleeping and I had no interest in anything for a while. Then, when I thought it was about time I resumed working on those songs, an accident occured: I lost all my multi-tracks and had no backup (lesson learned!). All I have now is some rough mixes on 320 kbps My initial reaction was a brief wish to quit, but then I thought "to hell with that, I can record all that again and it will sound even better". One day. Soon...
I hope you find the emotional strength and physical energy to do that, and to honour the memory of your mother. My very best wishes to you.
I am so sorry for your loss, that is a lot to go through. Taking care of family though is always first priority. That sucks about losing your mutli-tracks. I've been there. And in the days of tape, more often! But you are correct, if you re-record it, it will probably be better the second time. There are some vocals I'd already like to do on my album, because now that I've heard how they all go, I could sing them better! But I've got new things to turn to. Thank you for your interest. I'll PM you some links to my album!
Man, this is really diverse! There's a bit of nearly everything from punk to prog! Cool! The mixing has a lot of buried stuff and I'm not a fan of that thin snare drum sound, but the songs... Pretty strong songwriting, maan! That's my kind of thing! The songs that stood out on this first listening were "Beyond The Horizon", "You Can't Stop It", "It's Alright", "The Road Less Travelled", "Falling", "Epilogue To The Future" and "Let Go". "Laugh Dance" is funny, I like it too and there's "Secondsong": a Masterpiece!!!! I'll definitely listen to it again. Do you plan on releasing it on physical format? I'm already a purchaser!
Wow, thank you so much! I really appreciate that. - I don't know if I will release it physically yet. I actually thought of doing a vinyl issue at some point, but I'm not sure.
Out of curiosity, were they identical in colour? My FNAC blue seems to be a lot lighter than the B&N blue that I see from photos online.
Got my CD a few days ago and been listening to it in my car on drives. Well if 'Walls and Bridges' was made by a semi sick craftsman then McCartney 3 was made by a blind, deaf and paraplegic geriatric with mental issues. Whatever flame of genius Paul McCartney possessed is now either extinguished of burning very low indeed. Only 'Women and Wives' and 'Lavatory Lil' are passable. 'Women and Wives' had potential to be better. Also his production these days is on a par with Jeff Lynne in processed mush. He's also trying to be too hip and sound like someone like Katy Perry. It sounds to me like Paul has just written the first thing that came to mind and recorded it.
