The Pauls push ahead fearlessly
Legendary singers release their latest albums on the same day, today
When he was 24 years old, Paul McCartney famously looked a few decades into the future to record When I’m Sixty-Four, the Beatles tune about growing infirm by the fireside.
Back then, the song functioned as a cosy prediction. Yet once McCartney reached that age in real life, When I’m Sixty-Four became something of a comical object lesson: proof that even a beloved Beatle underestimated how long a formative rock and roller might stick around.
McCartney is 76 now, and today he’ll release a new studio album, Egypt Station, just days before he’s set to launch his latest tour in Quebec City. He’s not the only artist of his vintage with big plans, either; in fact, McCartney isn’t the only 76-year-old songwriter called Paul with a record due out this week.
Paul Simon, who in his mid-20s was himself picturing a future on a dusty park bench in Simon and Garfunkel’s Old Friends, also has a new album, In the Blue Light. And like McCartney he’s preparing once again to hit the road, in his case before he retires from touring.
Little needs to be said at this point to convince anyone of the widespread desire to see boomer icons while they’re still in action.
And McCartney and Simon have shared more than an age and a first name on their respective
journeys toward that lucrative hero status.
Both were inducted twice into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, first as members of a group and then as solo acts. Both were nominated for at least one Grammy Award for album of the year in every decade between the 1960s and the 2000s. More dubiously, in the early ‘80s both wrote and starred in quasi-biographical movies — McCartney’s Give My Regards to Broad Street and Simon’s OneTrick Pony — that make it clear nobody has ever been eager to tell these two “no.”
Yet what’s remarkable about Egypt Station and In the Blue Light, especially considering their release on the same day, is how differently each man is going about the business of late-stage pop stardom — differently from one
another, that is, and from their peers.
Neither of these projects is an affectionate excursion into the Great American Songbook like those we’ve seen from Rod Stewart and Bob Dylan. And neither is a back-to-basics effort... like the Rolling Stones’ recent Blue & Lonesome or one of Rick Rubin’s stripped-down productions for Johnny Cash or Neil Diamond.
Instead, McCartney and Simon each seem intent in their own way on pushing ahead, even when that means taking up the past.
The built-in takeaway from Egypt Station is that McCartney recorded the bulk of the album with Greg Kurstin, the hit-making producer known for his work with the likes of Pink and Kelly Clarkson. The idea the album puts across is that McCartney wanted to test his singing and songwriting against the conventions of modern record-making — to find out whether he’s kept his skills sharp enough to shine outside a strict legend-at-work context. The answer, often enough, is yes. More rigorous ly quality controlled than any album McCartney’s release in years, Egypt Station is consistent with its pleasures: the tuneful guitar crunch, the swelling piano parts, the crisp vocal harmonies that float just so over grooves that somehow bounce and thud at the same time.
Part of the implicit draw of these songs is hearing McCartney indulge his raunchy side at 76; here, in contrast with the rest of the album, he’s relying almost entirely on his extramusical star power. But who wouldn’t pull that out if he had it? As James Corden’s recent Carpool Karaoke segment with McCartney demonstrated, we’re talking about someone in whose presence fans are compelled to confess their devotion so earnestly that it hurts. Simon’s history weighs more heavily on In the Blue Light, which is understandable given that the run of shows he’s begun in New Orleans constitutes the final leg of what he’s calling his farewell tour.
But he maintains a renovator’s eye on In the Blue Light, which contains newly recorded versions of 10 lesser-known selections from his catalogue, beginning with One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor and ending with Questions for the Angels.
Yet Simon’s focus on deep cuts make it hard to view In the Blue Light as the self-congratulating cash grab you might expect. What the album offers instead is an interesting glimpse at the elements this notoriously painstaking creator thinks he got wrong the first time around, such as the elaborate percussion of Darling Lorraine, which he presents here in much more spacious form.
For some veteran pop stars, the price of longevity is the work required to disguise one’s age. The lack of shame in Simon’s 76-yearold voice happily disrupts that transaction.