Give My Regards to Broadstreet (1984) 


 


  1. No More Lonely Nights
  2. Good Day Sunshine/Corridor Music
  3. Yesterday
  4. Here, There and Everywhere
  5. Wanderlust
  6. Ballroom Dancing
  7. Silly Love Songs
  8. Not Such a Bad Boy
  9. So Bad
  10.No Values/No More Lonely Nights
  11.For No One
  12.Eleanor Rigby/Eleanor's Dream
  13.The Long and Winding Road
  14.No More Lonely Nights
  15.Good Night Princess

 

During the 1960s, The Beatles dipped their collective toes into film with a series of idiosyncratic cinematic ventures. Some were charming, others baffling, but most were done in the spirit of irreverent fun. Fast forward two decades, and Paul McCartney, ever the nostalgist, tried to revive the formula. The result was Give My Regards to Broad Street—a film few saw and a soundtrack even fewer remember with any conviction.

By all accounts, the film aimed for lighthearted whimsy but stumbled into obscurity. It never reached cinemas in many fairly major cities, and one suspects that even if it had, the reception would have been lukewarm at best. The soundtrack, for its part, mirrors the film’s lack of focus: a curious blend of old and new, stitched together without much sense of purpose.

The bulk of the album consists of re-recordings—some of McCartney’s solo efforts, others straight from the Beatles catalogue. To be fair, these updated takes are not without merit. There’s a certain novelty in hearing For No One or Eleanor Rigby polished up in 1980s studio sheen, and McCartney approaches the material with something resembling reverence. But one can’t help asking: what’s the point? The originals weren’t broken, and these versions add little beyond a sense of déjà vu in Dolby stereo.

There are new songs, albeit sporadically scattered. No Values and Not Such a Bad Boy are surprisingly solid efforts—energetic, tuneful, and utterly wasted here. One wishes McCartney had saved them for a proper studio album, where they might have stood out more clearly instead of being buried under a heap of retreads. Goodnight Princess, an instrumental homage to the ballroom era, is pleasant enough, though more decorative than essential.

The highlight, unquestionably, is No More Lonely Nights, a sweeping pop ballad elevated by a soaring guitar solo courtesy of David Gilmour. It’s the one moment on the album that feels like a genuine, standalone single—mature, melodic, and emotionally resonant. Its success, however, led to the peculiar decision to release it in multiple variations across different editions of the album, effectively beating its own hook into the ground.

As soundtrack albums go, Give My Regards to Broad Street is not offensively bad. It simply lacks any real reason to exist. Detached from the film, it comes across as a hodgepodge of rerecorded memories and underpromoted B-sides. A throwaway, then—but not without the occasional glimmer. File under: pleasant, but perplexing.

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