McCartney's Indie Debut Worth a Listen by George Ziemann -- June 7, 2007 Paul McCartney released a new CD yesterday, Memory Almost Full, much to the annoyance of many critics. Bob Lefsetz used 1533 words to slam this release, but less than a dozen of those words had anything to do with the music on it. Pitchforkmedia says, "he's too safe, too typical, too square", but again it has nothing to do with the music and everything to do with selling it at Starbucks, although they did their very best attempt at sticking their noses in the air over each song. On the other end of the spectrum is my almost-11-years-old daughter, who saw a commercial, came to me and asked, "Was Paul McCartney in the Beatles?" When I told her yes, she said, "I thought I recognized his voice." Then she wanted to know if he was related to Jesse McCartney. When Chaos and Creation in the Backyard came out a year or so ago, I considered breaking my boycott against the RIAA to buy it, just because it was McCartney. Unfortunately, I only ever heard part of one cut from the album, one time, during a commercial break from whatever I was watching the night the Grammys were on. I think that selling a CD at Starbucks is not half as uncool as selling one through EMI. Paul is bucking the normal, safe, typical and definitely square system that we in the U.S. know as the RIAA. That's a big plus in my book. Even better, you can actually listen to several of the tracks, which simply wouldn't be allowed if he was still with EMI. Start with the very Beatlesque video of "Dance Tonight," then take a listen to this montage/medley, which gives you enough of every song to get a feel for the record. Personally, I heard some very worthwhile things just in the montage, and when I listened to it a second time to pay more attention to which songs I liked best, I was already hearing layers I missed the first time. As soon as I find that Starbucks gift card someone gave us at Christmas, I'm gonna go pick up a copy. Make up your own mind. Follow-up -- June 25, 2007 -- Lefsetz finally seems to have listened to it. Let's see what Bob has to say... "This record is positively AWFUL! I'm surprised there aren't SUICIDES at Starbucks. That baristas haven't offed themselves rather than endure this piece of crap all day long. "Anybody who says this album is good has no ears. Maybe literally. Certainly was never exposed to Paul's previous solo work." Reuters/Billboard made this slightly more objective observation: "The new album starts with 75 percent more sales than his last solo outing, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, which began with 92,000 at No. 6 in 2005. "A good chunk of the first-week sales for Memory come from Starbucks coffee shops. The chain says that the album's June 5 arrival marked the largest single-day total by any album in Starbucks history. A dissection of SoundScan's non-traditional sector suggests that Starbucks accounted for 47 percent of the record's first week." So... McCartney puts out an album through Starbucks. The critics hate it. It has almost double the sales of his last CD, Chaos and Creation, which the critics loved AND had the marketing power of EMI behind it. Half the sales of Memory Almost Full came from people who were at Starbucks and actually heard it before they bought it, whereas EMI's mission with Chaos and Creation was to make sure you could NOT hear it first.