Credit: Alamy

When Paul McCartney sounded too much like The Beatles and regretted it: “It isn’t seemly”

Mon 18 May 2026 17:00, UK

Paul McCartney being a flop just doesn’t sound right at all, but if you were to pick out a time when he came closest to it, you’d have to say that the 1980s were a little rough and tumble.

In fairness, it was the first proper time in the best part of two decades when Macca found himself truly flying solo. Wings had disbanded in 1981, and it was easy for him to feel a little adrift, possibly making some mismatched musical decisions that he wouldn’t have done otherwise… Yes, I’m talking about ‘Ebony and Ivory’.

Yet after weathering various storms of this kind, especially in the form of his lacklustre 1986 album Press to Play, the former Beatle realised that something had to give, and he was going to have to work a lot harder in order to avoid the reputation of a washed-up has-been, but to do that, he had to call in reinforcements – and for Elvis Costello, it was his lucky day.

The result was the 1989 album Flowers in the Dirt, which, in the eyes of the critics, was a massive – and welcome – return to form for the sonic giant after years of missteps, so everyone was happy, and they all sailed off into the sunset… Well, all except for McCartney himself, whose harshest inner critic just couldn’t get rid of one niggling feeling.

The influence of Costello coming into the fray gave rise to the creation of tracks like the lead single ‘My Brave Face’, as well as others such as ‘You Want Her Too’ and ‘That Day is Done’. But why exactly did people love them so much? Because it was finally handing them back what they already knew and loved in an homage to The Beatles’ classic sound. McCartney wasn’t exactly comfortable with it.

“I really resisted it at first,” he admitted. “I said, ‘We can’t do this, man. This is me and John.’ But Elvis said, ‘It’s your style. There’s nothing wrong with it.’” It wasn’t an incorrect assertion from Costello, but it was still one that took a bit of convincing when it came to the musical maestro.

“You know, you don’t want to be seen to be trying to be a Beatle again,” McCartney tried to offer. “It isn’t seemly.”

Yet as time wore on, whether he genuinely came round to the idea, or Costello ground him down so much in search of a hit, something changed. “He really drew me a bit toward The Beatles thing,” Macca confessed. “He made me think, ‘Why am I being resistant to it? What is the resistance?’” That element of his psyche was probably better unpicked in a therapist’s office before committing it to an album, but nevertheless, it was clear that the magic formula still had its glimmers.

This is not to say that Flowers in the Dirt represented an instant return to the top flight and everything was completely plain sailing from there. The years that followed still had their hairy moments, particularly in his follow-up album, Off the Ground, but through it all, anyone could see that a spark had been revitalised in McCartney. Was it any surprise that the Fabs were the key to doing that?

Nearly 40 years down the line, you can clearly observe the effect this has had on the man as he ages into his twilight years. An album like his forthcoming The Boys of Dungeon Lane could have frankly never existed in the ‘80s, at a time when Macca was still so resistant to giving in to his past. Yet now, everything is different – and he might just have Costello to thank for changing his mind.