Exclusive stream: James McCartney, “Strong as You” from Me (2013)

by  Nick DeRiso

James McCartney, a musician with a blessing/curse of a last name, tries to come to terms with the strength needed to overcome such strokes of luck/misery on “Strong as You” — sounding an elegiac note that might have recalled his famous father if not for its darker sense of worry.

James, it’s clear, came by his way with a pop song honestly, as the progeny of former Beatle Paul McCartney, but he doesn’t tread the same path. The elder McCartney, in particular over the length of his musical collaboration in Wings with James’ mom Linda, tended to paper over such doubts with a blinding optimism.

Not here: As James McCartney offers an edgy, very modern guitar solo on this exclusive advance stream courtesy of the ECR Music Group, he returns to a theme of doubt — doubt bordering on a kind of desperate alienation. Whatever the song’s main character is saying, deep down it’s clear just how strong he isn’t.

And that James McCartney, just as clearly, has his very own things to say.

The theme here, so full of stark emotional irony, puts a lot of space between James and his old man — and lends a newfound sense of intrigue to the younger McCartney’s first full-length album Me, due on May 21, 2013.

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