Paul McCartney

Poor Paul McCartney: a Knight of the Realm, with a personal fortune of more than $1 billion, a new wife (an ex-model) and kid (to join his other three), and an early career so monumental that journalists still manage to perform critical fellatio while bashing him. You’ve got to feel sorry for him when you think about the unrealized dreams he must be consumed by behind closed doors every night of his miserable life. Nevertheless, it can’t be all that bad — his name ain’t Ringo. Maybe it’s this funk, though, that led the 63-year-old to recruit Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Beck) to work with him on his latest, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. Godrich managed to turn the most chirpy man in music into a downer with 13 tracks that almost juxtapose their almost universally optimistic lyrics with downbeat, even melancholic production. Question is: What does Macca have to be down about? He’s not still pissed at Yoko, is he? That’s so 1970.