Paul McCartney Goes Electro on Bloody Beetroots’ ‘Out of Sight’ – Song Premiere

The Bloody Beetroots. Photo: Enrico Caputo

Way back in 1980, Paul McCartney was exploring his interest in electronic music on the solo album McCartney II. Being Paul McCartney, he managed to land a song from the oddball sessions (“Coming Up”) atop the pop charts; however, much of the album, as epitomized by the popcorn-synth sound of “Temporary Secretary,” was 8-bit music before the world had a chance to create any nostalgic distance from those early days of computing and video games.

McCartney has always been fascinated with electronic music. His interest in the musique concrete of Karlheinz Stockhausen led to the composer’s inclusion as one of the cutouts on the Sgt. Pepper album cover, and he has been making occasional records as the Fireman with Killing Joke co-founder Youth for 20 years. So it comes as little surprise that he’d jump at the chance to record with the Bloody Beetroots, the stage name of the one-man Italian “dance-punk” innovator who calls himself Sir Bob Cornelius Rifo.

“Out of Sight” (which also features Youth) finds the old Beatle appealing to the stadium EDM crowd in a heavily thumping, airily melodic track on which he wails in his finest Little Richard mode. Rifo ”“ the masked performer identifiable by the year of his birth, 1977, tattooed across his chest ”“ was presumably still in diapers when McCartney was recording McCartney II.