Top 5 Reasons Paul Frustrates/Annoys You
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Excellent list BJ. Another frustration with Paul is what he chooses for singles. For example, he is going back on the road with new album (Driving Rain) after not touring for 8 years and with a totally new band (exception being Wix) in 2001. Paul selects the ballad "From A Lover to A Friend" as the first single, freaking amazing. That song is not radio friendly and is not going to get people excited about a new tour. News flash to Paul, select an upbeat rocker like the song "Driving Rain" or my favorite "About You".
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@yankeefan2 said in Top 5 Reasons Paul Frustrates/Annoys You:
Excellent list BJ. Another frustration with Paul is what he chooses for singles. For example, he is going back on the road with new album (Driving Rain) after not touring for 8 years and with a totally new band (exception being Wix) in 2001. Paul selects the ballad "From A Lover to A Friend" as the first single, freaking amazing. That song is not radio friendly and is not going to get people excited about a new tour. News flash to Paul, select an upbeat rocker like the song "Driving Rain" or my favorite "About You".
It's not the first time I've said this.... but the first minute of From A Lover to a Friend is great.... and then it completely falls apart. But, yeah, we could go back through the years, and he has never been all that good in choosing his opening singles.... That's for another time!... Beautiful Night was the obvious first single from Flaming Pie!
ps. Don't get me started on Maybe I'm Amazed.
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Yep, not making "Maybe I'm Amazed" a single until six years after it was on "McCartney" was a major blunder.
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@yankeefan2 said in Top 5 Reasons Paul Frustrates/Annoys You:
Yep, not making "Maybe I'm Amazed" a single until six years after it was on "McCartney" was a major blunder.
Major!.... It was brilliant!.... I still prefer the McCartney version than the live version.... But.... what a song! Up there with Paul's best ever!.... Why he didn't release it at the time?..... I remain flummoxed.
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@toris A single release of "Maybe I'm Amazed" would have been competing with "Let It Be" and "Long and Winding Road" which is something record companies try to avoid. And maybe Paul was cognizant of establishing a reputation as a solo artist. Even though rock stars sang plenty of ballads, they really didn't want to get lumped in with the likes of Engelbert Humperdinck or Tom Jones.
This brings me to another frustration which is Paul's reputation as a recording artist over the last 25-30 years. He seems to have been in limbo as far as radio formats are concerned since 1990. He was never really embraced as an adult contemporary artist (maybe by design) and his last gasp on Album Rock radio was "Figure of Eight". Elton John and Billy Joel, slightly lesser talents in my opinion, seem to make a bigger splash when they tour or whatever. They're certainly more prominent on Classic Hits radio. Both the Classic Hits and Classic Rock formats have been stuck on just "Maybe I'm Amazed" and "Live and Let Die" for many years now. I feel like everything Paul does seems to harken back to the past somehow, especially the Beatles, and it's like his whole solo career has been slowly disappearing like the people in the photo in the movie Back to the Future.
P.S. I'm referring to radio in the U.S., would be curious to know what it's like elsewhere.
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@victor said in Top 5 Reasons Paul Frustrates/Annoys You:
P.S. I'm referring to radio in the U.S., would be curious to know what it's like elsewhere.
I'm in the UK but don't listen to the radio very often. But if I'm driving and have a classic rock station on, it's very rare to hear any solo McCartney. I'm not sure if I ever have actually.
They will play some Wings, but seem to stick to either Band on the Run or Live and Let Die.
Our classic rock radio seems to think classic rock means things like Nickleback though, so the UK probably isn't a great example.
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@moggy Just to be clear when I referred to "solo" I meant "post-Beatles" if that makes any difference.
Same here with Classic Rock where it's moved into the '90s so I guess I'm really talking about what was.
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My initial thought is that Elton and Billy were always solo acts, so radio is more inclined to play songs throughout their career. Radio stations looked at Paul's career differently because he was in the most famous band in the world and the highly commercially successful Wings. Due to this, they never really embraced any of his solo songs because in their opinion they could not compare to his hits with the Beatles and Wings. They assumed that people would not want to listen to Paul's solo work because after all we all know it could not compare to anything he had done with The Beatles/Wings (lol). Paul did not help matters IMO because when interviewed by DJ's or other journalists, all he wanted to mention was the Beatles. You mentioned "Figure of Eight" and I will point out what I consider the difference. Paul was promoting his first tour in years and this song was not only the first single off FITD but he actually started the concert with this song. After that, his solo singles were buried if played in show and he did not talk about them much when promoting new album/tour.
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I haven't listened to the radio for decades. It was such fun when young, cos we didn't have all the new platforms. It was all radio, or splashing out eight bucks on a new album... well earned, from a paper round. Now, it's just advertisements, banal banter, with the occasional song... and, yes, I might sound like an old fart.... but, for me, 90 per cent of music since the turn of the century is crapola. I wish we had You Tube when I was a teenager!
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ps. Victor, Back to the Future is one of my fave movies ever....
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Well, I think I have gotten all the responses I am going to get on this thread. Thanks to everyone that commented, I appreciate it. From time to time, I take a sabbatical from this board and now it is time for another one. Paul is 81 so there really is not much news coming from him lately. The one project I cared about ("It's A Wonderful Life") that was put on hold due to COVID is never going to happen. Sadly, Paul never updated his fans about the project. Guess he was busy answering 50-year-old Beatle questions yet once again. Take care everyone, until we meet again -lol.
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@b-j-conlee said in Top 5 Reasons Paul Frustrates/Annoys You:
@yankeefan2
Yes, I hear your frustration with Paul as much as you do. To me it starts with your #1 of the Top 5 Reasons.
I still remember his Tours/ Setlist after his last 2 Albums...McCartney3 and Egypt Station. In my opinion, both Albums were generally very good. With great anticipation we were guessing which great songs were going to be played. With Both tours I was equally disappointed with the results.
On the tour after McCartney 3, I was the most annoyed. As everyone here remembers, we got only 1 song from McCartney 3. Where was "Slidin"? Where was "Find My Way" and "Seize the Day"? Where was "When Winter Comes" and "Kiss of Venus"? We got none of them and yet Paul trots out the same Beatle songs he's been doing for years. I was so anxious to hear how Paul and his "Full Band" were going to interpret these great "new" songs. And yet we only got "Women and Wives" at only some of the Shows. What a wasted opportunity for big time fans like you and me.During the tour after Egypt Station it was equally frustrating. Instead of getting great songs like "I Don't Know", "Happy With You", "Dominoes ", and "Who Cares", he trots out "meaningless" songs like "Fuh You" and " Come On To Me". How frustrating!
I remember the 2002 Tour after "Driving Rain" was Released. At that time I thought Paul was the Best "Live" Show on the Planet. After the 2005 and 2009 Tours, it has gone downhill from there. In all honesty, his Tours have become an " Oldies Concert" with Macca just concentrating on his Beatle songs. Instead of Paul being a "Cutting Edge and Unpredictable" artist, his shows are a model for "predictable" hits. I no longer go to his shows for the reasons I hav given above.
I think the reason he didn’t do all the obvious ones from McCartney III is that he intended Got Back to be a short tour, just American and English dates, and thenGot Back was gone. He didn’t want himself or the band to go to a lot of work when it never extended to Europe, Latin America, Japan, etc. I was disappointed as I especially thought Find My Way and Lavatory Lille would have been perfect live. He had dropped Women and Wives by the time I saw him in Knoxville.
He won’t say what he poster of him at the end of a road going into the ocean sad—his touring days are done. Maybe an occasional life appearance or two but, sadly, he is winding down.
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@john-mackintosh I want some of whatever you were smoking when you wrote that post! (so many typos in last paragraph I had a hard time following it)
I personally don’t think he’s done touring. He loves playing for a live audience too much. -
@njr Sorry for the muddled language as I was tired. I was trying to say that one of the paper posters sold during the tour featured Paul walking down a narrow road or path with a vast ocean beyond. I recall that it appeared somewhere on here and was widely interrupted as stating that he is at or near the end of his touring days. Considering that the Got Back tour never extended beyond American and a few English dates, this may well be the case.
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@john-mackintosh whoops! My last sentence stated interrupted rather than interpreted. My original word was unwittingly changed by spell checking software, at least that’s my interpretation of what happened.
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That was a strange poster.
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@oobu24 said in Top 5 Reasons Paul Frustrates/Annoys You:
That was a strange poster.
Yeah, it looks like he’s actually walking off a cliff!