MUSIC
The song Paul McCartney waited 30 years to release.
By the 1990s, Paul McCartney could have retired and closed the door on a legacy of phenomenal music. From his work with The Beatles to his incredible strides with Wings and solo career, Macca became known for crafting pop melodies as if they were second nature, from saccharine ballads to uptempo rockers. Although McCartney usually had the best instincts regarding his music, his solo career contained one song that waited in the can for 30 years.
Throughout his time with the Fab Four, John Lennon and McCartney quickly turned their songwriting model into a science. Even when both writers couldn’t complete one of their songs, they would usually pass it along to their bandmates to help fill in the gaps, leading to beautiful collaborations on songs like ‘A Day in the Life’ and ‘I’ve Got a Feeling’.
By the end of the band’s tenure, though, McCartney had grown used to making songs and using the other band members as backup musicians, often dictating what he wanted them to play based on how he heard the tune in his head. Although the band would fracture due to those creative tensions, McCartney had a long solo career awaiting him, starting with experimental albums with his wife Linda before forming the basis of Wings with the late Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine.
After his next band’s tenure fizzled out at the turn of the 1980s, McCartney finally felt comfortable embracing his status as a solo star, making albums indebted to the pop sounds of the day, like Tug of War. Although not every album could claim to light up the world in the same way that his early records did, McCartney was given a refresher course on what his classic sound was supposed to be when working on The Beatles Anthology.
Teaming up with ELO frontman and resident Beatles nerd Jeff Lynne, McCartney would use the model of the Fab retrospective as the basis for his next album, Flaming Pie, with the title stemming from a line from John Lennon. Although the album would feature excellent deep cuts from McCartney’s career, one of the great songs got shelved.
On the same day he recorded the bulletproof ballad ‘Calico Skies’, McCartney recorded a version of the song ‘When Winter Comes’. Reminiscent of the sounds of albums like RAM, McCartney evokes the imagery of rural surroundings throughout the track, being happy to stay inside and warm himself by the fire and the family he created along the way.
While the track may not have fit the album then, McCartney thought enough of the tune to give it a proper release years later. As the rest of the world stayed in their homes amid the pandemic lockdowns, McCartney released ‘When Winter Comes’ as the final track on his third all-solo outing, McCartney III.
Dovetailing the album’s recurring riff, ‘Long-Tailed Winter Bird’, the song serves as a peek back at the simpler times for McCartney, bringing a snapshot of his musical career back into a modern lens. While McCartney has been able to spit out musical masterpieces like clockwork whenever he walks into the studio, ‘When Winter Comes’ is just a subtle peek into the massive amount of brilliance that he has hidden away in the vaults.
