Back in the U.S. (2002) 

 

Disc One
  1. Hello Goodbye
  2. Jet
  3. All My Loving
  4. Getting Better
  5. Coming Up
  6. Let Me Roll It
  7. Lonely Road
  8. Driving Rain
  9. Your Loving Flame
  10.Blackbird
  11.Every Night
  12.We Can Work it Out
  13.Mother Nature's Son
  14.Vanilla Sky
  15.Carry That Weight
  16.The Fool on the Hill
  17.Here Today
  18.Somethin
  
Disc Two
   1. Eleanor Rigby
   2. Here, There and Everywhere
   3. Band on the Run
   4. Back in the U.S.S.R.
   5. Maybe I'm Amazed
   6. C Moon
   7. My Love
   8. Can't Buy Me Love
   9. Freedom
   10.Live and Let Die
   11.Let it Be
   12.Hey Jude
   13.The Long and Winding Road
   14.Lady Madonna
   15.I Saw Her Standing There
   16.Yesterday
   17.Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band/The End

 

To be honest, it was getting slightly redundant by this point with all of the live Paul McCartney releases that seemed to come out each time he did a world tour. In many ways, this release is almost identical in style to 1990's Tripping the Live Fantastic in that he replicates the entire show. Yes, it had been twelve years since that last album, but he hadn't really put out that much new material in those twelve years. Plus, there was the fact that his shows didn't contain very much of his latter material anyway, with the exception of the obligatory new songs from the album he was promoting on the tour.

So there are songs from his newest album, Driving Rain and some of The Beatles songs are different, but other than that, there's not that much difference. But really, when going to a Paul McCartney show, most wouldn't want the show to be much different, anyway, and what you have here is what the majority of the fans would expect when they slap down outrageous sums of money for a Paul McCartney concert.

Fortunately, there are no "soundchecks" and other song "interferences" that he'd been known to inject onto his live albums. No, he just has the songs here in the exact order that he played them. What would have been nice would have been if he would have left some of the in-between songs chatter intact. Not all, but some. For example, he plays two tributes to the two fallen Beatles; Here Today for John, and Something for the recently departed George. It would have been nice to hear him say a few words about his old bandmates, since casual listeners may not even appreciate the significance of those songs.

On a curious note, he released another "version" of this album called "Back to the World" which swapped out a few songs since he changed up the setlist a bit when he crossed the globe. I really wish he could have included those songs as bonus songs here, as opposed to swapping them out entirely. A minor complaint. Overall, this album is very good providing you don't happen to have any other live Paul McCartney CDs.

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