Paul McCartney Wants to Finish a New Solo Album Next Year

Paul McCartney has set a New Year’s resolution for himself: Finish his next album.

In a short Q&A with fans on his website, McCartney confirmed that he’s “been working on a lot of songs,” but had to put the album “to the side” because of his Got Back Tour (which launched in 2022 and finally wrapped this month with a special London show featuring Ringo Starr and Ronnie Wood).

“I’m hoping to get back into that and finish up a lot of these songs,” McCartney wrote. “So, how’s about that? My New Year’s resolution is to finish a new album!”

McCartney released his most recent solo album, McCartney III, in 2020. It was a follow-up of sorts to its two predecessors, 1970’s McCartney, and 1980’s McCartney II, though it directly followed his 2018 solo effort, Egypt Station. 

In 2021, McCartney shared the remix album, McCartney III Imagined. That LP featured an array of new collaborators and remixers, including Beck, St. Vincent, Phoebe Bridgers, Damon Albert, Khruangbin, Dominic Fike, Josh Homme, and Anderson .Paak. 

While McCartney hasn’t released any new solo music recently, this year did see him shepherd the arrival of the last Beatles song, “Now and Then.” The track is based on a piano demo John Lennon recorded in 1977, and which Yoko Ono gave to the surviving members of the band in 1994. At the time, George Harrison laid down some guitar parts for possible inclusion on the Beatles Anthology box sets, but the quality of the original demo was so poor, the group decided to abandon the song.

Years later, however, McCartney was able to clean up the demo using the same technology Peter Jackson’s team developed to restore and preserve the archival audio for the Get Back movie project. McCartney and Starr recorded new drums and vocals, which they mixed with Lennon’s demo and Harrison’s old guitar parts. “Now and Then” was recently nominated for a couple of Grammys as well, including Record of the Year.

From Rolling Stone US.