Do We Still Need Him?

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Chaos and Creation is full of the melodies that have always been McCartney's trademark--the single, Fine Line, grabs you by the ear in four bars--but for the most part, they've been stripped of cuteness and nostalgia. What strikes you first is that the sad songs are really sad. At the Mercy gets past the sentimental and into the startling fact that genuine love can leave you powerless and insecure. Riding to Vanity Fair, a trippy ballad about rejected friendship, is the most misanthropic thing the composer of Ob-La-Di has ever recorded. He insists it's not directed at anyone in particular, and the lyrics--"You're not aware/ Of what you put me through/ But now the feeling's gone"--don't offer up any autobiographical clues, but it seethes with bitterness. The trick to these very tough tunes is that they're essentially untethered from anything like a formal chorus. They don't try to resolve themselves; they just drift into provocative emotional territory and linger for a while. Chaos and Creation has its share of bright moments too--the arena-ready Follow Me, the joyously goofy Promise to You Girl--but the album feels like a catalog of all McCartney's emotions, not just the easy ones.

McCartney knows that he didn't rise to his place in the pop firmament by pushing the envelope. "I'm not a rebel," he says. "In actual fact, I'm pretty straight, and I don't mind at all that people see me that way." Still, he seems to have turned a musical corner. When he thinks about the U.S. tour he will launch Sept. 16 in Miami, he says, "It'll be great not to be out there with a crap album, singing songs I don't care much about." And if audiences still mostly pine for another roundelay of Hey Jude? "They'll get that too, but you have to move forward as well as go back. As they say, the show must go on!" And now there's a compelling reason to tune in.