A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

SAY, SAY, SAY WHAT YOU WANT: Macca has a new album out Tuesday, and there's a really lovely profile of him in last week's New Yorker ("When I'm Sixty-Four," by John Colapinto) that talks about the burden it can be to be A Former Beatle, but also the joy he recognizes in what he's accomplished:

I mentioned that the song ["That Was Me"] seems to express amazement at the life he has led.

“That’s exactly it, and I am amazed,” he said. “How could I not be? Unless I just totally blocked it off. There were four people in the Beatles, and I was one of them. There were two people in the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team, and I was one of them. I mean, right there, that’s enough for anyone’s life. And there was one guy who wrote ‘Yesterday,’ and I was him. One guy who wrote ‘Let It Be,’ ‘Fool on the Hill,’ ‘Lady Madonna’—and I was him, too. All of these things would be enough for anyone’s life. So to be involved in all of them is pretty surprising. And you have to pinch yourself. That’s what that song [”That Was Me”] is about.”

The profile reminds us that as accomplished as Macca is as a songwriter and as a bass player, he's also a hell of a good singer, with a voice "he could alter to fit whatever style of song he was playing: throwing his voice into an ecstatic high register, like a young Elvis Presley, on a song like 'Can't Buy Me Love,' or belting like Little Richard on 'I'm Down.' 'I'm very luck with my voice,' McCartney said. 'I have no idea how it happens.'"

Every time I listen to something like "Golden Slumbers" or "Hey Jude" (note: not the Dr. Hizzy version), the vocals . . . well, everything still blows me away. I mean, c'mon: it's Paul McCartney. Is there any way to describe everything that makes him genius?