Press to Play (1986)
1. Stranglehold
2. Good Times Coming/Feel the Sun
3. Talk More Talk
4. Footprints
5. Only Love Remains
6. Press
7. Pretty Little Head
8. More Over Busker
9. Angry
10.However Absurd
11.Write Away
12.It's Not True
13.Tough on a Tightrope
14.Spies Like Us *
15.Once Upon a Long Ago *
* CD Bonus Track
 
It's kind of ironic that each member
of the best Rock and Roll band in history would manage to put out some
really really bad solo albums. This is Paul's worst. He had been in a
slump for the last several years, and sadly this only brings his
reputation and his work down further still. This album is a prime
example of trying too hard. He's trying to do many things too hard, and
none of them worked at all.
For starters, he doesn't seem to be handling the aging process well. He
was in his mid forties when this album came out, and on the album cover,
it looks like he's trying to look like a twenty year old kid. Not that
this should matter. Twenty year olds probably hated this album as much as
those Paul's age, however. The music sounds like he's desperately trying to be
"hip". He would later learn, as he got older, that he could just be
himself, and his talent would resonate with millions regardless of his
age. He's embracing the eighties style of dance-syntho music to the
extreme. He experimented a bit with this on McCartney II, and even though that album
wasn't that good either, at least it sounded like experiments. Here,
he's fleshing them out into actual songs and the results are
tragic.
He really was trying. He's got a lot of talented musicians
helping him out such as Pete Townsend and Phil Collins, and he even uses
mega eighties superstar producer Hugh Padgham. In addition to Phil
Collins, Padgham also had success with Genesis, XTC and The Police, so at the
time it probably seemed like a good choice. Sadly, for the most part,
the music is just bad. There are so many obnoxious synthesizer
elements, electronic drums, and bad eighties production, that it just
takes the mediocre songs and plummets them to the depths of disgust.
If you want to look hard for anything good (and you have to look
real hard), the tracks Only Love Remains, a semi-decent
ballad, and Press, a semi decent pop songs, are really the
album's only salvation. The rest is a cacophonous mess. He also, like
most of his other albums in the past decade, leaves a hit single
released around the same time off the record. I still can't
figure out why. The single Spies Like Us from the movie of the
same title is included in the bonus version of this album, and had in
been on the original would have improved the quality slightly. Another bonus
cut, Once
Upon a Long Ago is also a sweet piece that easily outpaces anything
else here.
Not surprisingly, this record didn't even crack the top 100.
Go back to the main page
Go To Next Review