Feature …
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On 11 December, the legendary former Beatle, Wings frontman, solo star and collaborative genius Paul McCartney will release his lockdown album, McCartney III. Silver Digest reflects on the prodigious talent at 78…
T
he Brits have a charming
cut tragically short when he
quirk when noting the
was assassinated 40 years ago
professions of some of
this December, McCartney has
their most beloved icons. In media
continued to write and perform.
profiles and so on, they sometimes
His work with Lennon has joined
list their profession as ‘national
the pantheon of humanity’s all-
treasure’. So the Queen, for
time great artistic achievements,
instance, would be listed as:
but over the decades McCartney
The Queen
has evolved, collaborated
Profession: Queen/
with others, gone in and out of
national treasure.
fashion and, let’s face it, grown
Paul McCartney would be:
old. (Although, you could easily
Musician/national treasure.
knock 20 years off his age and no
But the truth is that the former
one would question it. His voice
Beatle and song-writing legend, at
might be a bit rougher around the
78 years old, has transcended even
edges, but there’s still something
that elevated status. He’s more like
enduringly youthful about him.)
a global resource. His music is like
Documentation of the seven bright years of the Beatles’
to everyone. It’s almost
existence, and even the rest
impossible to imagine
of McCartney’s life, is so
a world in which his
thorough that it has,
and important song-writing partnership in history. Together
gorgeous melodies
as New Yorker writer
with him, alone or in partnership
don’t exist.
Adam Gopnik has it,
with others, McCartney has written
“reached saturation
32 No. 1 songs on the Billboard Hot
point”. Everything
100. No-one has topped that.
McCartney’s legendary Beatles song-writing partner,
is so well known,
John Lennon, would
He’s also had number-one hits
the anecdotes so well
with Michel Jackson and Stevie
have been 80 this year.
travelled, the details so
Wonder. As recently as 2015, he
Although they’d played
thoroughly researched and
together since the late 50s, Lennon and McCartney officially formed the Beatles in 1960, which means Paul’s musical career “on the world stage”, as GQ’s Dylan Jones puts it, is 60 years old. While Lennon’s career was 10
archived, it’s impossible to add The Lennon Wall in Prague is filled with John Lennoninspired graffiti and pieces of lyrics from Beatles songs.
SILVER DIGEST // SUMMER 2020/2021
topped the Billboard charts with a collaboration with megastar rapper
anything. It’s also impossible, given
Kanye West and Barbadian singer
the volume and hyper-detail of it
Rihanna, called FourFiveSeconds.
all, to sum it up.
The Beatles song Yesterday, which
Perhaps it would suffice to
he is reputed to have written in his
say that Lennon-McCartney
sleep, is thought to be the most-
was simply the most successful
covered song of all time.
Continued …
PHOTOS: EMKA74 , ISMAEL QUINTANILLA III / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
cultural oxygen; it belongs
