Paul McCartney – ‘McCartney II’
For the first time in a decade, Paul McCartney found himself alone in his home studio. Across the summer of 1979, McCartney recorded a series of demos and songs that were influenced by the stripped-down spirit of new wave, krautrock, electronica, and the upcoming synthpop movement. McCartney was still committed to his band Wings, so the recordings were nothing more than an experiment to stave off boredom and experiment with new technology.
And then Wings fell apart. Tensions between McCartney and Denny Laine were starting to become more pronounced, and when the band entered Japan, things boiled over. For a decade, McCartney had been barred from entering the country due to his cannabis arrests. When Wings were finally cleared to enter the country for a tour, McCartney was immediately busted at the airport with 219 grams of pot. After being deported, McCartney put Wings on hold and decided it was time to release his solo recordings.
Since the sessions harkened back to the spirit of McCartney’s lo-fi solo debut McCartney, he decided to name the new album McCartney II to solidify the record as his second truly solo album. Unlike McCartney, which featured Linda McCartney on backing vocals, Paul is the only musician to appear on McCartney II, having played the standard assortment of acoustic instruments in addition to trying out new technology like synthesisers, drum machines, samplers, and effects.
It’s probably good that McCartney leads off with the poppy familiarity of ‘Coming Up’. Even though the synth effects and rubber guitars are more new wave-adjacent than McCartney had ever been before, ‘Coming Up’ was still a recognisable McCartney pop song. The live version with Wings later gave them their sixth number one in the US, proving that style changes and sonic experiments would never get in the way of McCartney writing a classic pop melody.
And then McCartney goes fully off the rails with the experimental bare-bones track ‘Temporary Secretary’. Sounding like a demented mix of Kraftwerk, The Residents, and Devo, McCartney sets up a primitive synth loop, a discordant melody, and some bizarre lyrics that look even creepier with four decades of hindsight. And yet, ‘Temporary Secretary’ manages to be both charming and challenging at the same time, completely breaking down everything that McCartney had made himself out to be by the 1980s. Whether it was survival or self-sabotage, ‘Temporary Secretary’ is the purest distillation of McCartney’s one-man madness trip on McCartney II.
The bluesy and spacey ‘On The Way’ follows, with McCartney jumping from genre to genre with reckless abandon. A sonic successor to ‘Let Me Roll It’, ‘On The Way’ brings the focus back to McCartney’s unmatched skills as a bass player. The groove that McCartney conjures up with six or seven or eight different versions of himself all overdubbed on top of each other is impressive, even if ‘On The Way’ stalls out without much direction at a certain point.
Another major style change comes next in the beautifully sparse ‘Waterfalls’. With just an electric piano and a guitar, McCartney manages to craft another classic ballad that stands up to other great slow songs in his catalogue like ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ and ‘My Love’. Here, the electronic touches work wonders, with McCartney completely in charge of the synth soundscape that floats in the background of the arrangement. It never overpowers the gentle main feature, which is just McCartney and a keyboard singing a lovely tune.
Side one concludes with the rockabilly swing of ‘Nobody Knows’. McCartney’s refusal to polish up the songs on McCartney caused frustration for fans who saw him as a musical genius. He did a fair amount to rectify the balance throughout his work with Wings, but ‘Nobody Knows’ is a return to form. It’s just McCartney messing around with a basic blues progression, making up words and riffs as they come to him. After the schlocky and saccharine Wings material that he had been pumping, the irreverent side of McCartney feels like a breath of fresh air.
If your biggest issue with McCartney II is that it’s unfocused, experimental, and unfinished, then you’ll despise side two of the album. The second side kicks off with ‘Front Parlour’, an instrumental that still feels futuristic all these years later. It’s a remarkable backing track that McCartney has crafted, including the filtered vocal effects that take the place of his standard lead vocals. It’s hard to underestimate how much a song like ‘Front Parlour’ doesn’t sound like traditional Paul McCartney. That’s eternally frustrating for some, but it can also be revelatory when it catches you in the right mood.
Pulling himself back into the classical world, McCartney unfurls the languid and engrossing ‘Summer’s Day Song’. Focused more on the intertwining synth-string lines than any kind of lyrical storyline, ‘Summer’s Day Song’ was an early sign that McCartney would embrace classical music in earnest in the decades to come. It’s undeniably the most pristine and pretty moment on an album full of jagged edges and purposefully deconstruction.
How McCartney ever thought it was a good idea to name a song ‘Frozen Jap’ is anyone’s guess. The icy synth instrumental certainly sounds slightly oriental, which might be the explanation behind the song’s title. The track isn’t anything to get too worked up about – it’s ornate but never interesting enough to take off on its own. Perhaps if McCartney had recorded some gonzo vocals on top of it, the song would be more of an interesting point. Instead, it’s a non-starter.
The inane rock and roll tribute ‘Bogey Music’ comes next. If your patience for McCartney’s cutesy eccentrics has a limit, ‘Bogey Music’ is the exact point of McCartney II that will cause you to turn off the album and search for something else to do. It’s a song that seems custom-made for the skip button on Spotify, but if you bought McCartney II in 1980, you had no choice but to sit through ‘Bogey Music’ just to see if the final two tracks are worth listening to. ‘Darkroom’ is another weirdly horny electronic experiment that follows in the shoes of ‘Temporary Secretary’. McCartney conjuring up baby noises might be the very limit that certain people can take of the man, but his ability to manipulate and modulate his own voice through machines is, at the very least, radical. ‘One of These Days’ closes out the LP in a more traditional style, with McCartney plucking out an acoustic ballad that stands in stark contrast with the synthetics found on the rest of the album.
McCartney II, even more so than McCartney’s first solo album, is a fractured and patience-testing record that forces you to look at Paul McCartney in ways that you never had before. His restless creative drive is admirable, even if he doesn’t always make great music. There’s plenty of material on McCartney II to justify its purposeful weirdness. It’s hard to love the album: its experimental nature and deliberate avoidance of pop and rock make it McCartney’s most challenging studio effort.
It’s also one of McCartney’s most fascinating works of his entire career: something so out of pocket that it seems like provocation. In 1980, nobody but Paul McCartney could have released an album like McCartney II and gotten away with it. Whether you see it as a strange relic, a genius high point, or an unlistenable piece of trash, McCartney II still causes strong reactions for than four decades after McCartney dropped it on an unwitting public.
