I am a huge fan of Paul McCartney from 1962 to 1988. The music he has made since then has not been very good, at least in my opinion. But when you look at one performer no one has a better or more impressive musical legacy than Sir Paul. I feel that Paul needs to work with a producer and a songwriting partner to tell him what is good or not. Look at Paul's ;ast amazing album FLOWERS IN THE DIRT to see what Elvis Costello did for Paul.
so when I first heard about the cover album, THE ART OF MCCARTNEY i got a little concerned mostly because of how I feel about cover songs. I have one simple rule if you're going to cover a song, especially a famous one. The song must be the same length of its original; start the same and end the same. Sure I want the artist to do their style in the song, but I want it to mirror the original.
So here is a brief look at the line-up; KISS, Heart, Brian Wilson, Alice Cooper, Def Leppard, Jeff Lynne, Perry Ferrell, Owl City and about 20 more artists covering 34 of Paul's greatest. Some sound amazing like (my favorite) Owl City's 'Listen To What The Man Says', Smokey Robinson's 'So Bad', KISS doing 'Venus And Mars/Rock Show at 'The Long And Winding Road' by Cat Stevens.
Some don't work at all like Cheap Trick doing 'Jet' and the butchering of one of my favorite Beatles songs 'Things We Said Today' by Bob Dylan.
But this is a serious fun collection! The 2 disc collection comes in a nice box with a DVD showing many of the recording sessions and final versions of the songs.
Beatles fan, McCartney fan or Wings fan... this made me remember why I loved Paul's musical history so much.
Matman Rating: 4.5 out of 5 yeah yeah yeahs!
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