Paul McCartney Wrote a Trump-Inspired Song for His New Album
Paul McCartney hasn't often been the most overtly political artist during the course of his distinguished career, but it sounds like at least one of the songs on his next album will be inspired by current events — specifically Donald Trump's ascendancy to the U.S. presidency.
McCartney shared the news during a Q&A session at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, an event that found him speaking with students about the usual rock-star stuff — like what he expects from session musicians and what he wants out of a producer — as well as the somewhat surprising revelation of a Trump-inspired track among his more recently written songs. According to the Liverpool Echo, McCartney told the crowd, "Sometimes the situation in the world is so crazy that you’ve got to address it."
The two have rubbed shoulders socially in the past, as Trump told Larry King during a 2006 interview in which he claimed he'd told the former Beatle that he was making a mistake for not getting a prenuptial agreement with his second wife, Heather Mills. "He insisted on no prenup and it's going to cost him a lot of money. And I told him. Now, I will say this. Prenups are very tough," said Trump. "In our world with the long courts and with the vicious lawyers and with all of the problems, if you have money or if you think you're going to have money, you have to have a prenuptial agreement."
Whether McCartney regrets not taking Trump's advice is a mystery, but as he told Australia's Daily Telegraph earlier this year, he certainly doesn't share Trump's ideology or doesn't support the way he's conducted himself in the political arena.
"I’m not a fan at all," he told the paper. "He’s unleashed a kind of violent prejudice that is sometimes latent among people. Most people don’t feel it’s okay to be like that. When there were protesters at his rallies, Trump would say, ‘Oh, beat them up, give them a good punch’ — wait a minute, I’m not sure that’s cool for a leader of a country to be saying that. Maybe for a hockey player. He’s unleashed the ugly side of America. People feel like they have got a free pass to be, if not violent, at least antagonistic toward people of a different color or a different race. I think we all thought we’d got past that a long time ago."
Details regarding the new LP remain hazy, but it's known that McCartney's been working with producer Greg Kurstin on the record, which he described as being "in the middle of" earlier this year. In the meantime, McCartney remains on the road through early October, and can be heard on a pair of tracks recorded for Ringo Starr's next album, Give More Love.
Paul McCartney Through the Years: 1948-2017 Photos