When Paul McCartney gave Mark Ronson a “masterclass” in songwriting
It really hasn’t mattered what Paul McCartney’s pumped out for the last 55 years. Ever since The Beatles came to a close in 1970, the musician had already joined the nation’s heritage of prodigious songwriters before he’d even turned 30.
Never mind that his output has been bang average at best—save rare flashes of ingenuity from 1980’s electronically-coated McCartney II to The Fireman project with Killing Joke bassist Youth—but immortal standards from ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ to ‘Let It Be’ ensured an eternal fascination with generations of future artists, whatever pap McCartney indulged in.
The Beatles’ pop legacy effortlessly reaches into the contemporary music world. Counting the likes of Amy Winehouse, Adele, and Christina Aguilera as notches in his production belt, studio whizz and guaranteed pop-maker Mark Ronson fancied himself as a collaborator with the former Beatle. Having DJ’d his wedding to Nancy Shevell, Ronson received a call from McCartney to visit the studio and knock some ideas around.
A few months later, he found himself grappling with several of McCartney’s demos and sketches, yet one number immediately seized him as possessing surefire hit potential. “It was just such an instant classic,” Ronson told MTV News, “I said, ‘I would love to work on that song with you’, and that’s how it started. It was a masterclass in learning how to put together a fucking incredible song—just watching his mind work.”
The song Ronson fell in love with would lead McCartney’s 16th studio album. Released in September 2013, ‘New’ would provide an illustrative beckon to the namesake album’s vibrant and vivacious pop twirl.
A colourful stomp of Mellotrons and harpsichord whimsy, complete with a Beach Boys style break before its closing, sunshine coda, New’s title track seemed to reach into Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’s kaleidoscopic palette but coated with a fresh and modern pop sheen.
Ronson’s fawning appraisal of ‘New’ is certainly charitable, but it’s undeniably charged with an infectious pop hook and radiant optimism that can only be conjured from McCartney’s songwriting pen. Doing a lot of heavy lifting, the rest of the album rarely matches its lead single’s cheerful rush, but New proved to be another late winner for McCartney, peaking at number three on both the UK and American album charts, and helped support his Out There tour at the time.
McCartney’s often spoken of his “work songs” over the years, the pieces he sits at the piano for with his day job in mind over earnestly attempting another ‘The Long and Winding Road’, ‘New’ sits in this tradition of McCartney’s songbook with inoffensive charm. “It’s catchy, it’s summery, it’s a love song. I think people will recognise it as definitely me,” he told BBC 6 Music’s Matt Everitt. “It’s a love song, but it’s saying don’t look at me, I haven’t got any answers. It says I don’t know what’s happening, I don’t know how it’s all happening, but it’s good and I love you.”
