THE TRACKS PAUL McCARTNEY DETAILED FOR A SLECT GROUP OF FANS

These are the tracks Paul premiered for the exclusive group, who remained in awe throughout the presentation of the songs. This marks his first album release since 2020, and as each melody played, Paul mouthed nearly every lyric and occasionally played air drums, making it an incredible night for everyone present.

“As You Lie There”

This track was inspired by Paul’s childhood in Liverpool and a neighbor he grew up with. “I really fancied named Jasmine,” looking at his wife and adding, “Sorry, Nancy.” The song opens as a spoken-word piece before transitioning into a sweet melody that eventually evolves into a rock track, shifting its tempo and structure as it unfolds. “Do I ever cross your mind as you lie there?” he asks. “As you lie across the bed, am I there inside your head?”

“Lost Horizon”

This is a track discovered by the late Eddie Klein, who worked with the Beatles at Abbey Road and later with Paul at his Sussex studio in England. Paul admitted that he had no memory of writing or recording it. He explained, “we produced it exactly like the cassette,” before taking it to Los Angeles to overlay guitar parts. The song, characterized by its steady rhythm and mid-tempo groove, is a nostalgic journey into the past, featuring lyrics that remind us “time makes every moment count” and “you gotta live for now.”

“Days We Left Behind”

Paul said: “It’s my memories of Liverpool, “Dungeon Lane was near where I lived, me and George [Harrison]. I would get the bus and the next stop, he’d get on. We’d talk about guitars and rock ‘n’ roll. It was all coming in. It was all arriving.” McCartney also talked about going down to the Mersey shore. “I was a big bird watcher,” he said, drawing a laugh as the audience assumed he meant girl watcher, using the British slang. “No,” McCartney said, indicated he really meant the winged variety.

“Ripples In a Pond”

A very upbeat song with McCartney’s vocals pushed front and center and with a bouncy pop production before delving into a spacy, inventive bridge. Written for and about Shevell, McCartney changed the song from third person, “she” to second person, “you,” to personalize it more for his wife. During the playback, McCartney even looked straight at his wife of 15 years as he mouthed lyrics including, “I love you more than I ever did before.” McCartney recorded the song in England and then sent it Watt to make it bouncier and dancier.

“Mountaintop”

Produced with tape loops, the spacy song is from the perspective of a young girl tripping out with her friends at a music festival. Paul’s voice is almost unrecognizable in the dreamy song that sounds like a cousin to “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” After singing about how everyone’s tripping, Paul adds, “everyone’s flipping/need to get a grip and get away, or do you want to stay.”

“Down South”

A revealing story about how Paul used to hitchhike with both George Harrison and John Lennon, often by grabbing a ride with a lorry (truck) driver and heading to Wales or southern England around Exeter. He recalled how once he and Harrison were in Wales and had hopped a ride “in a milk truck. George in the middle. He was sitting right on the battery. George jumped up,” Paul said, acting it out. “He had jeans with a zip on the back and it connected with the battery! [Later] he showed me the zip mark [burned onto his body].” Paul also took the time to poke fun at Lennon pretending to be poorer than he was. “John always used to say — bless him — that he was a working-class hero,” before he added the John actually had some very “posh” relatives. “Ringo really was working class. George and I were kind of working class,” Paul said, recalling the time he and John hitchhiked to Paris and one of John’s relatives gave him £100– a grand sum in those days–which they spent very quickly.

The charming song, rooted in an acoustic guitar, is the literal story on Paul and George meeting on the bus and growing into hitchhiking friends. “It was a good way to get to know you before we learned ‘Twist & Shout,’” he sings.

“We Two”

The album contains many inventive twists and turns, but perhaps none more endearing than the creation of this stripped-down tune. As Paul explained, when EMI got purchased by Thorn Electrical in 1979, the buyer wanted to purge all the equipment from Abbey Road (which EMI owned at the time). Paul got a lot of the old studio equipment, including a Studer four-track tape machine that the Beatles recorded many of their classics on, the harmonium played on “We Can Work It Out” and the spinet used on “Because.”

Because the Studer could only record four tracks, the Beatles employed a technique called “bouncing down,” which would quickly mix two tracks down to one to free up tracks. Paul said “I and Ringo would be on bass and drums, which would take up two tracks and then we’d bounce it down to one track. You had to get it right because you couldn’t get it back.” In England, Watt and McCartney wrote the sweet love song, “We Two,” to record on the Studer and bounced down the tracks. “We’re particularly proud of the snare drum” on the record, McCartney said, of the song that ends with the sound of the track playing backwards.

“Come Inside”

One of the album’s pure rock tunes had the audience clapping along with Paul giving little explanation. “It’s basically a rocker. Not a lot I can say about it. Just play it,” he said to Watt, who was calling up the songs on his laptop. The driving tune includes the message, “Open up your mind/open up your heart/nothing else is keeping us apart.” “That sounds nice,” McCartney said, concurring with the audience.

“Never Know”

“I was out in California. I’ve always loved that Laurel Canyon vibe of the ‘70s. I was playing guitar trying to get that vibe. This is me trying to do that,” Paul said of the dense, heavy tune that then veers into a clarinet and then turns heavy again, with Paul sounding a little like Lennon vocally.

“Home To Us”

Beatle fans will go nuts for this nostalgic track that features Ringo Starr on drums and Starr and McCartney trading vocals line by line as they sing about growing up. But it didn’t come together without some confusion, McCartney explained.

“I saw Ringo and said I worked with this guy Andrew. Ringo came over to Andrew’s studio and played a little bit of drums,” he explained, but then things went slightly off the rails with misunderstandings. Starr thought he’d given Watt enough to create a song, but was “a bit pissed,” McCartney says when it wasn’t enough. McCartney really liked Starr’s contribution and created a song around growing up in Liverpool. “Even though where we lived was a little rough, it was home to us,” McCartney said.

McCartney sent the demo to Starr and asked him to sing on it and, misunderstanding, Starr only sang on the chorus, leading McCartney to think Starr didn’t like the song. Eventually, they talked through everything, and Starr came back, added more drums and the two turned the song into true collaboration.

“Ringo’s never done a duet with one of the Beatles,” McCartney said with a laugh. Not surprising, it’s probably the most Beatle-esque track on the album, with tempo shifts, key changes and layered vocals with assists from the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde and Texas’ Sharleen Spiteri.

“Life Can Be Hard”

A sweet love song written during the COVID lockdown which McCartney and Shevell spent with Shevell’s niece, her husband and their new baby. “It was very nice. Every day, [Nancy] would ask if she could wake the baby,” McCartney said, once again grabbing an acoustic guitar. As the crowd cheered, he laughed and said, “I haven’t done anything! Let me try again.” The audience again cheered, leading McCartney to very good-naturedly mutter, “pathetic.”

He demonstrated how he created a gentle melody and then would let the baby strum the strings, leading Shevell’s niece and husband to declare that “it’s our song.” The genial, simple song is meant to inspire hope for the future. “I like that tune,” he said after it played. “It has very good memories.”

“Star”

Paul was touring in Costa Rica and had a day off, which he planned to spend lathered up with sunscreen poolside. But it was pouring rain most of the day. So, McCartney decided to write a song instead and came up with “Star,” another uplifting song. “The first star on the night is always special when you see it,” he said. “It always gives me a little hope.” The sweet, melodic acoustic tune stresses “I know my little world is still alright,” upon seeing the first star pop out each night.

“Salesman Saint”

Another song that is extremely autobiographical features McCartney writing about his father, James, the “salesman” in the story, and his mother Mary, the titular “saint” and a nurse/midwife. The couple met during WWII and McCartney’s dad was also a fireman who would put out fires caused from Germany’s bombing raids.

“We moved outside of Liverpool with our parents making sure me and my brother, Mike, did ok,” McCartney said, praising the resilience that his parents’ generation exuded during tough times. The track opens with a trumpet and builds from there into a heavy tune with time signature shifts and the message in the lyrics of “They couldn’t take anymore, but they had to carry on.”

“Momma Gets By”

The closing track starts as a lush, dramatic piano ballad that expand to strings and an orchestra. “Sometimes, writing a song, you don’t draw on memory, you’re making it up,” McCartney said, referencing writing “Lady Madonna.” Same with “Momma Gets By,” which includes the opening lines, “Momma gets by, while papa gets high.” But even though papa is a wastrel, Momma loves him with “all her heart and soul,” as they struggle to put food on the table. McCartney sings from the perspective of their young son, though he stressed again this was not about his parents.

Following the conclusion, McCartney noted how no one theme dominates the album (though nostalgia is a pretty recurring theme), and that he worried about lack of cohesion. “Then you remember the Beatles albums. We didn’t worry about that,” he said with a little smile.

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