Maccaccaccaccacca.


What does any self-respecting thirty-six-year-old who was given £30 in Amazon Gift Card vouchers for his birthday spend them on? Special Edition remasters of two of Paul McCartney’s best 1980s albums Tug of War and Flowers in the Dirt, that’s what.

You’d think this many years into the game my interests might deviate, but apparently not; the man who first bought Flowers in the Dirt on cassette from Wembley Market in his early teens is buying it again in his mid-(don’t you dare say “late”)-thirties on a different format; give it another twenty years and I’ll be paying to have the album implanted into my head.

Yet again, I prove where my allegiance lies; I didn’t use the vouchers to buy the 50th Anniversary remaster of Sgt Pepper- even if that was essentially another Macca-led project; I spent them on his less-celebrated yet often as interesting solo work. A lot of people would sniff at that statement, but only because they’re comparing the man’s later work with his earlier stuff and judging him against himself; how many people can say they’ve achieved what he’s done in his life? So very few - so why can’t we celebrate him for it? There’s no need to be snobby about it.

I’m currently on track four of Flowers - the beautiful Distractions, with it’s And I Love Her-style semitone key change for the classical guitar solo (I’m a musical nerd) - and it’s like being reunited with an old friend; I haven’t heard it properly in years, since no longer owning a tape deck. Strangely, I don’t find myself judging the taste of the thirteen-year-old me; it’s probably more acceptable for someone of my age to like this sort of thing now. I don’t care; for me, Macca’s songs are little gifts that keep giving. Thanks Mum for the vouchers (she’ll like that).

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