Paul McCartney "Kisses On The Bottom" Album Review :
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| Paul McCartney "Kisses On The Bottom" Album Review |
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| Paul McCartney "Kisses On The Bottom" Album Review |
Paul McCartney Kisses on the Bottom
Studio album by Paul McCartney
Released 7 February 2012
Recorded 2011: Capitol Studios, Los Angeles, New York, London
Genre Jazz, pop
Length 56:39
Label Hear Music
Producer Tommy LiPuma
Paul McCartney chronology
Ocean's Kingdom
(2011) Kisses on the Bottom
(2012) TBA
(2012)
Singles from Kisses on the Bottom
"My Valentine"
Released: 20 December 2011
"Only Our Hearts"
Released: 7 February 2012
Professional ratings
Review scores
Source Rating
Allmusic
The A.V. Club
BBC Favourable
Chicago Tribune
Contact Music (Mixed)
The Daily Telegraph
Drowned in Sound (5/10)
The Guardian
The Independent
KPCC (Positive)
Los Angeles Times
NPR (Positive)
The Observer
Pop Matters (6/10)
Rolling Stone
This table needs to be expanded using prose. See the guideline for more information.
Kisses on the Bottom is the 16th solo studio album by Paul McCartney, and his first since 2007's Memory Almost Full. The album was released on Hear Music on 7 February 2012. It has been released on LP and CD.
Contents
1 History
2 Track listing
3 Reception
4 Release and promotion
5 Chart performance
6 References
7 External links
History
The album's title, "Kisses on the Bottom", comes from the album's lead track "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter," originally a hit for Fats Waller in 1935. Said McCartney on the album, "I worked with Diana Krall, and great jazz musicians like John Clayton. This is an album very tender, very intimate. This is an album you listen to at home after work, with a glass of wine or a cup of tea." The disc was helmed by jazz producer Tommy LiPuma who has previously worked with Miles Davis and Barbra Streisand, among others.
In the album's liner notes, McCartney said, "For years I've been wanting to do some of the old songs that my parents' generation used to sing at New Year...But we tried to work out a slightly different approach, and used a selection of songs that wouldn't be the obvious ones...that everyone tends to cover." McCartney also said working with LiPuma reminded him of his Beatles days with former producer, George Martin, in that both were knowledgeable and influential veterans in the music industry.
"My Valentine", the first song released from the album, features Eric Clapton on guitar. Stevie Wonder appears on another album track, "Only Our Hearts". McCartney plays acoustic guitar on two tracks, "Get Yourself Another Fool" and "The Inch Worm," but otherwise contributes only vocals to the album.
Track listing
No. Title Writer(s) Length
1. "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter" Fred E. Ahlert, Joe Young 2:36
2. "Home (When Shadows Fall)" Peter van Steeden, Jeff Clarkson, Harry Clarkson 4:04
3. "It's Only a Paper Moon" Harold Arlen, E. Y. Harburg, Billy Rose 2:35
4. "More I Cannot Wish You" Frank Loesser 3:04
5. "The Glory of Love" Billy Hill 3:46
6. "We Three (My Echo, My Shadow and Me)" Sammy Mysels, Dick Robertson, Nelson Cogane 3:22
7. "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" Arlen, Johnny Mercer 2:32
8. "My Valentine" Paul McCartney 3:14
9. "Always" Irving Berlin 3:50
10. "My Very Good Friend the Milkman" Harold Spina, Johnny Burke 3:04
11. "Bye Bye Blackbird" Ray Henderson, Mort Dixon 4:26
12. "Get Yourself Another Fool" Haywood Henry, Monroe Tucker 4:42
13. "The Inch Worm" Loesser 3:43
14. "Only Our Hearts" McCartney 4:21
Deluxe Edition
The deluxe version of the album includes two additional tracks (including "Baby's Request", a cover of a Wings song from the Back to the Egg album), a download code for access to an exclusive live show available from Paul McCartney's website a week after the album's release, and longer liner notes and expanded album packaging, including three postcards.
No. Title Writer(s) Length
15. "Baby's Request" McCartney 3:30
16. "My One and Only Love" Guy Wood, Robert Mellin 3:50
Live From Capitol Studios
No. Title Writer(s) Length
1. "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter" Fred E. Ahlert, Joe Young 2:42
2. "Home (When Shadows Fall)" Peter van Steeden, Jeff Clarkson, Harry Clarkson 4:45
3. "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" Arlen, Johnny Mercer 2:51
4. "My Valentine" Paul McCartney 3:22
Reception
In a review of the album for BBC Music, writer Patrick Humphries referred to the collection as "an album of neglected dishes from the great banquet of American popular music", before concluding that "what McCartney accomplishes here, in the best possible sense, is an album ideally made for Easy Listening".
Neil McCormick, reviewing the album for The Daily Telegraph, noted that of McCartney's two original compositions on the album it is "impossible to pick them out as contemporary songs amongst the standards" and that whilst "Only Our Hearts" is "unremarkable", the album's other original, "My Valentine", "has the ring of a classic".
Release and promotion
A stream free live performance was hosted by iTunes on February 9, 2012. McCartney performed live from Capitol Studios in Los Angeles, where much of the album was recorded. People tuned into the show by accessing iTunes on their PCs or Macintosh computers. McCartney performed "My Valentine" live at the 2012 Grammy Awards with Diana Krall and Joe Walsh. The single climbed to No.23 in the February 18, 2012 Billboard Adult Contemporary Chart after its debut at No.28.
It has debuted at No.3 on the UK album chart and No.5 on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart. The album also debuted at No.17 on the Billboard Jazz Album Chart in the U.S. The album was Paul McCartney's 18th Top Ten charting album in the U.S. as a solo artist, giving him a Top Ten album in five consecutive decades as a solo artist, and six consecutive decades including his tenure with The Beatles.
In the U.S., the album debuted in the Top Ten on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart 48 years to the month after the album Meet The Beatles! cracked the Top Ten in February 1964.
=CD review: Paul McCartney 'Kisses on the Bottom'=
Published: February 17, 2012
POP
Paul McCartney “Kisses On the Bottom” (Hear Music/Concord)
The title “Kisses On the Bottom” is a line lifted from the 1935 Fats Waller hit, “I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter,” but it's also a sample of Paul McCartney's sometimes — shall we way, uh — cheeky sense of humor?
But there's a lot more fun going on here than just a smart-alecky album title. McCartney isn't the first British artist to pay tribute to the so-called “Great American Songbook,” but he sure does a better job of it than a certain gravel-voiced crooner who seems to have made a second career out of covering the old standards.
It's evident from the beginning that Macca loves these old tunes that his jazz band leader father used to perform on the piano at home, treating them with respect and inviting Diana Krall and her band to bring a touch of jazzy class to the aforementioned Waller number with a bouncy midtempo piano and brushed snare arrangement as he sings: “I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter / And make believe it came from you / I'm gonna write words oh so sweet / They're gonna knock me off my feet / A lot of kisses on the bottom / I'll be glad I got 'em.”
Smoky slow-dancers such as “Home (When Shadows Fall)” (first recorded by the Dorsey Brothers in 1931) and “More I Cannot Wish You” (from the 1950 musical “Guys and Dolls”) are warmed by Krall's combo and a full orchestral string section, the latter song using the arrangement Johnny Mandel first created for Frank Sinatra.
The London Symphony Orchestra also brings muted, shimmering beauty to McCartney's heartfelt reading of the Irving Berlin classic “Always,” and a couple of other luminaries show up to lend their distinctive touches to the two McCartney originals here. That's Eric Clapton adding crystalline acoustic guitar to the velvet-and-candlelight mood of “My Valentine,” while Stevie Wonder brings just the right shades of harmonica highlights to the yearning album closer, “Only Our Hearts.”
The sweet sincerity evident in McCartney's voice — which still retains its smooth timbre 69 years on — is likely inspired by Nancy Shevell, his new wife, but McCartney has always brought romantic honesty to his love songs, whether they were silly or not.
— Gene Triplett
=+Paul McCartney: behind the scenes of the Kisses on the Bottom album photo shoot=
Behind the scenes with Sir Paul McCartney at the photo shoot for his new album, Kisses on the Bottom, with his daughter Mary as the photographer.
By Clive Morgan4:24PM GMT 12 Feb 2012Comments
For his latest album, Kisses on the Bottom, Sir Paul McCartney enlisted his daughter Mary to take the pictures to coincide with the album.
The album, Sir Paul McCartney's first studio album in five years, showcases the former Beatle on a "deeply personal journey" covering classic American songs that inspired him and bandmate John Lennon when they wrote their own tunes.
Here is a behind-the-scenes look at the photo shoot.
Talking about the album, McCartney said: "When I kind of got into songwriting, I realised how well structured these songs were, and I think I took a lot of my lessons from them."
"I always thought artists like Fred Astaire were very cool. Writers like Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, all of those guys – I just thought the songs were magical. And then, as I got to be a songwriter I thought it's beautiful, the way they made those songs."
Teaming up with Grammy-winning jazz musician Diana Krall and producer Tommy LiPuma, the ex-Beatles frontman recorded his vocals in a booth without instruments for the first time in his musical career.
"It was very spontaneous, kind of organic, which then reminded me of the way we'd work with the Beatles. We'd bring a song in, kick it around, when we found a way to do it we'd say 'OK, let's do a take now' and by the time everyone kind of had an idea of what they were doing, we'd learnt the song. So that's what we did, we did the take live in the studio," said McCartney.
Sir Paul is the last of the Beatles to receive the honour; his star now sits outside the Capitol Records building, next to those of the other Fab Four members, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and John Lennon – and even a star for the band itself.
He will also be performing at the 2012 Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.
=McCartney's 'Kisses on the Bottom' charts in top 10 on Billboard, iTunes=
Steve Marinucci
Beatles Examiner
Paul McCartney's "Kisses on the Bottom" will make its debut at #5 on the Billboard 200 Thursday after selling 74,000 its first week, the magazine says.
The album is also doing well at iTunes, where it's ranked the 10th most popular album on Wednesday. The album's single, "My Valentine," was ranked #117 there.
UPDATE: McCartney's 'Kisses on the Bottom' leaps to top of jazz charts
Another U.S. chart, Hits Daily Double.com, also shows "Kisses on the Bottom" at #5.
The album is also making chart showings all around the world. On Australia's ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) chart, it debuted at #25. On the Belgian Flanders chart, it debuted at #46, while on the Wallonia chart , it was #45.
On the Dutch Media Markt album top 40, it's at #15, while on the Hungarian Mahasz chart, it debuted at #34. On the Norwegian VG Lista chart, it's at #9. And on the Swedish Sverigetopplistan chart, it's #29.
With the Billboard 200 listing, "Kisses" becomes McCartney's 18th top 10 album after the Beatles.
=Review====
The former Beatle has a great reverence for standards and he does them proud on this very charming album : By CLAIRE SUDDATH February 16, 2012
Kisses on the Bottom
Year: 2012
Artist: Paul McCartney
Label: Hear Music / Concord Music Group
Here’s a story my father likes to tell:
It’s 1967 in Jackson, Mississippi and he’s 18 years old, riding in the car with my grandfather. For several years the two have had a recurring argument about rock ‘n’ roll, specifically the Beatles. My dad thinks their music is revolutionary while my grandfather says the Fab Four make nothing but noise. Instead, he favors big band music and songs by Irving Berlin.
The car’s radio is tuned “to some Lawrence Welk-type station,” as my dad remembers it, which is playing an upbeat, piano-based instrumental song full of soaring horns and string instruments. They’re well into their Beatles argument when my grandfather gestures to the radio and says, “Now this is a good song. This is real music. If the Beatles wrote something like that, I might like them.” My dad turns to his father. “They did,” he says. “That’s an instrumental version of ‘Good Day Sunshine’.”
“Well, then they should have played it that way to begin with,” my grandpa harrumphs. Forty-five years later, thanks to Paul McCartney’s new album Kisses on the Bottom, my grandpa finally got his wish.
McCartney turns 70 this year. It’s surprising, I know. Maybe it’s because his hair is still (dyed?) brown and he still fits into his slender-legged suits, but he doesn’t seem that old. I saw him play the Apollo Theater last year and he belted the ending of “Hey Jude” with as much energy as he did when the song was first recorded. Macca’s still got it, but you wouldn’t know that from listening to Kisses on the Bottom. There is no ‘it’ there. No rocking, no rolling, nothing that will take you above a resting heart rate. The Beatle appears to have finally grown old.
Kisses is a collection of 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s standards that McCartney has known since childhood — his father was a former big band member, after all. From tunes such as “Your Mother Should Know” and “Martha My Dear” (and of course the “woke up, got out of bed” part in “A Day in the Life”), it’s clear that this musical era influenced his songwriting. McCartney has great reverence for these classics and he does them proud on Kisses, which on the whole is a very charming album. It’s produced by Tommy LiPuma and arranged by Alan Broadbent and Diana Krall (who also plays piano on it). The record feels relaxed and effortless, as if McCartney simply got bored one afternoon, pulled an old songbook off the shelf, called up a few friends — Stevie Wonder and Eric Clapton make brief appearances—and recorded some songs for a lark.
Listen to McCartney deliver the 1940s tune “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” and it’s easy to imagine him soft shoeing his way through a song-and-dance routine. He even twists his voice on “My Very Good Friend the Milkman” into a nasal whine that very much resembles the one belonging to the song’s original singer, Fats Waller. But the elderly creak is beginning to become apparent in McCartney’s voice. It’s faint, but it’s there.
Kisses has been called McCartney’s first return to his roots. But that’s not exactly correct. In the late 1980s, he released an album called Снова в СССР in the Soviet Union (U.S. audiences heard it in 1991) that explored early rock ‘n’ roll songs that more directly influenced his Beatles work. The album even included a rendition of Little Richard’s “Lucille,” which McCartney had covered back in the Fab Four’s early days. Kisses isn’t, therefore, a definitive collection of tunes that McCartney feels were most important in his life. They just seem to be the ones that he’s taken with right now.
And he is very taken with them. There are just two McCartney originals on the album, “Valentine” and “Only Our Hearts.” The former is a sparse love song featuring Eric Clapton on finger-picked guitar, while the latter’s orchestral arrangement sounds exactly like something that might have been played on my grandfather’s favorite radio station. They highlight just how fully he has embraced this musical mode — and why we might not get another “Maybe I’m Amazed” any time soon.
As for the album’s weirdly suggestive title, it’s taken from a line in another Waller song “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself a Letter,” that serves as the album’s opening track. “A lot of kisses on the bottom / I’ll be glad I got ‘em,” the song goes, referring to XOXOs at the end of a letter and not, as people unfamiliar with the song might assume, an actual human bottom.
McCartney is well aware of his title’s double meaning. Hear Music, his record label, notes in the record’s accompanying press release that he’s “apparently had some fun” with the title. McCartney’s always had a cheeky sense of humor — after all, this is a man who once wrote an entire song about a three-legged dog. But he has a reputation for the overly sentimental (“Silly Love Songs,” anyone?) that can make a Valentine’s Day store display look heartless. Kisses on the Bottom is a terrible title, and it makes it hard to take the album seriously. (The cover art, in which a doe-eyed Macca holds an oversized bouquet of flowers, doesn’t help either).
McCartney’s solo career has had its highs ( McCartney, Ram) and its lows (McCartney II), but nearly every album contains one truly great work of songwriting. Kisses on the Bottom is no exception — even if this time, the album’s greatest tunes were all written by others.
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