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Sir Paul McCartney has announced his brand new solo album, ‘McCartney III’.
The announcement of the record was teased earlier this week with a number of visual clues, and it has now been confirmed that the Beatle is set to end a 40-year wait by finally rounding off his ‘McCartney’ solo album trilogy.
Beginning with his debut solo record ‘McCartney’ in April 1970 — which saw its creator playing every instrument and writing and recording each song — McCartney followed that up 10 years later by releasing ‘McCartney II’ in May 1980.
While a number of solo McCartney albums followed that LP — the most recent being September 2018’s ‘Egypt Station’ — McCartney has only now completed work on the final part of the trilogy of ‘McCartney’ albums.
A press release explains that the musician initially hadn’t planned to release an album in 2020, “but in the isolation of ‘Rockdown’ he soon found himself fleshing out some existing musical sketches and creating even more new ones”.
“Before long an eclectic collection of spontaneous songs would become ‘McCartney III’: a stripped back, self-produced and, quite literally, solo work marking the opening of a new decade, in the tradition of 1970’s ‘McCartney’ and 1980’s ‘McCartney II’.”
Recorded earlier this year in Sussex, ‘McCartney III’ was “first sparked” when McCartney returned to an unreleased track from the early 90s, ‘When Winter Comes’ (which was co-produced by the late George Martin). He crafted a new passage for the song to give rise to the album’s opener, ‘Long Tailed Winter Bird’.
‘When Winter Comes’, featuring its new 2020 intro ‘Winter Bird’, has also been revealed to be the final track on the album.
Speaking about the new album, McCartney said: “I was living lockdown life on my farm with my family and I would go to my studio every day. I had to do a little bit of work on some film music and that turned into the opening track and then when it was done I thought what will I do next? I had some stuff I’d worked on over the years but sometimes time would run out and it would be left half-finished so I started thinking about what I had.
“Each day I’d start recording with the instrument I wrote the song on and then gradually layer it all up, it was a lot of fun. It was about making music for yourself rather than making music that has to do a job. So, I just did stuff I fancied doing. I had no idea this would end up as an album.”
You can pre-order Paul McCartney’s ‘McCartney III’ here.
McCartney had been set to headline Glastonbury Festival’s 50th anniversary edition earlier this year, but the festival was cancelled back in March due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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