Paul McCartney Releases A Video For His Exuberant ‘Find My Way’
Paul McCartney’s ‘Find My Way’
The entire world knows that Paul McCartney has released a lockdown album last night – Iman already reviewed it – and the reviews are overall good, 82 on Metacritic? What about that! Macca is a legend, he is the legend, one of the last Beatles, an essential piece of music history, a monument, a man with a spectacular career, and a part of our collective memory, our DNA. He is essential and the fact that, at 78 years old, he is still recording new music after such a career just proves the amazing power of art and creation.
The famous musician has also released a music video for one of the tracks of his entirely self-produced and self-engineered album, ‘McCartney III,’ and the clip for the upbeat and exuberant ‘Find My Way,’ could not have illustrated his joie de vivre any better. Multi split-screen sequences show him in his home studio playing all the instruments and having a great time, while layering guitar, keys, bass, drums, vocals, even taking a falsetto. The entire song is playful, especially because of these little catchy guitar riffs, and it sounds very McCartney without being too Beatle-y or too Wings-y to sink into nostalgia.
The lyrics reflect a true optimism about life – he said in an interview he counts on living to 100, the age at which British citizens traditionally receive a telegram from the Queen: ‘You’ve got to have a plan, right?’ But the lyrics also reflect the current mood of distress: ‘You never used to be afraid of days like these / And now you’re overwhelmed to your anxieties/Let me help you out, let me be your guide / I can help you reach the love you feel inside.’
‘That was written at the beginning of lockdown. It was a very scary time. Other scares we’ve had – SARS, avian flu – they seemed to happen to other people. But this was happening to everyone, people you knew, everyone in the world. Some of my friends, some people I knew were close to going under with it,’ McCartney said in an UNCUT interview,
‘I was thinking about people who worry more than I do. And I know one or two people which are just kind-of worried about life. And it’s not that I don’t, it’s just that I deal with those worries and think “No, it’s ok, there’s a way out of this” and I can generally find some optimistic exit from a bad situation. But there are some people who do get overwhelmed with it. So I think I was addressing those people and thinking “you never used to be so anxious but now you are, so let me be your guide, let me help you, to find the love that is inside you” it just felt like a natural thing to say. So that’s what it’s about. The rest of the song is me saying “I can find my way, I know my left and right.’
Just like the song, the video, which was directed by Roman Coppola, looks like a celebration of life during a difficult situation, an acknowledgment of McCartney’s enduring spirit.
