“ If I didn’t do it as a job, I would do it as a hobby, because it’s just in me. There’s something magical in any art form about discovering ‘that thing’ ... it’s just so exciting, and it never gets boring.” ”

Neville, whose work explores the inner lives of cultural figures from backup singers to Fred Rogers, approached the project with a guiding principle rooted in music itself. Before assembling the film, he began by constructing what he described as a “soundtrack” of McCartney’s post-Beatles songs, using them as a narrative blueprint.

“The great thing about making a film about a songwriter is their songs,” Neville said. “The songs tell you that they need to be there, because he’s narrating some part of his life through them.”

That approach shaped the structure and emotional arc of “Man on the Run.” The result is a peek into a life propelled by a sense of restlessness, insatiable creativity, exploration, and forward motion. Despite setbacks that could have discouraged others — a bizarre television special, a handful of commercial flops and an infamous international arrest — McCartney pressed on.

For McCartney, watching this period if his life unfold on screen isn’t without discomfort.

“There were bits of it that got embarrassing, where I thought, maybe we should take those out, because I’m going to be sitting there squirming like I was tonight,” McCartney said, laughing.

Source: brown.edu

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Ranking The Beatles is either a rite of passage—or a guaranteed way to start an argument you won’t win. For a band this canonized, even suggesting one album sits below another feels borderline reckless. Just as we did with our ranking of every Rolling Stones album, that’s exactly why we’re doing it anyway.

And before anyone jumps in: yes, there are technically debates about how many studio albums exist. But in 2026, the only list that matters—the one that drives the streams, the searches, and the algorithm—recognizes 13. That includes Magical Mystery Tour, officially folded into the canon during the CD era reset. Using cultural impact, streaming longevity, and actual front-to-back replay value, this is the ranking that reflects how people listen now—not just how music critics wrote about them 50 years ago.
13 Yellow Submarine (1969)

While the title track is a global icon, the album is often viewed by historians as a contractual obligation rather than a cohesive studio statement. As the Beatles' most incomplete album, it paired four new tracks with George Martin’s orchestral film score, lacking the unfiltered creative density found in their primary discography.

Despite its lower ranking, the title track remains a top-tier streaming asset, yet the album itself holds the lowest consistent session rate of the late-era releases. In a catalog defined by precision, this record serves as a fascinating outlier that audiences treat more as a placeholder than a mandatory front-to-back listen.

Source: screenrant.com/Sarah Polonsky

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As the biggest band in pop and rock music history, The Beatles have been the subject of countless hours and column inches dedicated to discussing their greatest songs, albums, and even movies and post-group releases. But alongside their array of chart-topping hits, the band’s output was so great that their complete catalogue contains several hundred less well-known, but no less impactful and meaningful, tracks.

Over the years, critics and fans alike have thrown forward dozens of these underrated songs as their favorites—five choice examples of which are listed here.

“THE WORD”
“SHE’S LEAVING HOME”
“I’LL FOLLOW THE SUN”
“THE END”
“YOU KNOW MY NAME (LOOK UP THE NUMBER)”

“THE WORD”

Track six on the Beatles’ sixth album Rubber Soul, John Lennon’s “The Word” marks a turning point between the band’s earlier pop and rock sound and a shift towards a more experimental, psychedelic sound and more expressionistic lyrics. Here, they write about love in an overtly philosophical way for the first time.

According to Paul McCartney, that shift in “The Word” was at least in part due to the band’s use of marijuana during the songwriting process here—but there was a musical driving force behind this track too, besides a psychoactive one. As McCartney also later explained, the band was keen to write a song using a melody based around a single repeated note, “like [Little Richard’s] Long Tall Sally,” adding that “We got near it with ‘The Word.’”
“SHE’S LEAVING HOME”

Released on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967, “She’s Leaving Home” showcases a band willing to experiment with both their sound, their lyrics, their arrangements, and their storytelling. Co-written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, the three-and-a-half-minute song—which tells the story of a young girl who runs away from her stifling family home, leaving her parents devastated—is one of only a few in the band’s catalogue in which none of the members plays a single instrument: instead, the backing is entirely performed by a string section.

Source: mentalfloss.com/Paul Anthony Jones

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It seems Paul McCartney got a little help from his friend Ringo Starr for his upcoming solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane.

Billboard reports that McCartney had a listening party for a group of about 30 fans at producer Andrew Watt’s Diamond Dust studios in Los Angeles Thursday, and in taking them through the record revealed that his Beatles bandmate appears on one of the tracks.

According to the mag, Starr plays drums and trades vocals with McCartney on the song “Home to Us,” described by Billboard as the “most Beatle-esque” Dungeon Lane track.

The tune, which also features vocals from Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde and Texas’ Sharleen Spiteri, has lyrics about growing up in Liverpool. McCartney explained, “Even though where we lived was a little rough, it was home to us.”

McCartney joked that Starr's contribution to the track is somewhat of a first for him, noting, "Ringo’s never done a duet with one of the Beatles."

The Boys of Dungeon Lane will be released May 29. It is McCartney's first solo album since 2020’s McCartney III.

Source: yahoo.com

Tomorrow (April 18), John Lennon‘s 1970 track ‘Love’ will be re-released in the form of nine “meditation mixes” from his son Sean Ono Lennon for Record Store Day.

The tracks are now available to stream on the Lumenate app and will come out on vinyl tomorrow.

Ahead of the release of the mixes, a new video for ‘Love’ has been shared, featuring never before seen footage of Lennon and Yoko Ono on holiday in Greece.

“After the surprising success of the Mind Games (Meditation Mixes), and our collaboration with Lumenate the Meditation App, we are very pleased to bring you Volume Two – a collection of ambient reimaginings of John Lennon’s classic song, to create a meditation of ‘Love,” says Sean Ono Lennon.

Elsewhere, Sean recently said he has “technically” taken over the role of custodian of his father’s legacy.

“But obviously the world is also the custodian of his legacy, I would say,” said Sean. “I’m just doing my best to help make sure that the younger generation doesn’t forget about The Beatles and John and Yoko. That’s how I look at it.”

When asked if he thought it was possible for the new generation to not remember, Sean replied, “To forget about it? I do, actually,” adding, “And I never did before.”

Source: rollingstone.co.uk/Will Richards

The Boys of Dungeon Lane is not only the first new solo album to be released by Paul McCartney in over five years; it is a collection of rare and revealing glimpses into memories never-before shared, along with some newly inspired love songs, from one of the most culturally significant figures of our time.

With The Boys of Dungeon Lane, Paul McCartney turns the lens inward, revisiting the formative years that shaped not only his life, but the very foundations of modern popular culture. In a career defined by timeless storytelling and unforgettable characters, Paul now tells the most personal story of all, his own. The Boys of Dungeon Lane is his most introspective album to date and takes the listener back to where it all began.

These extraordinary new songs find Paul in a candid, vulnerable and deeply reflective mood, writing with rare openness about his childhood in post-war Liverpool, the resilience of his parents, and early adventures shared with George Harrison and John Lennon long before the world had ever heard of Beatlemania. These were the years that historians continue to examine, the quiet, unguarded days that unknowingly laid the groundwork for a cultural revolution. Paul visits them not as myths or folklore but as his own memories.

The album takes its title from one of the many standout tracks which is available now, Days We Left Behind, a stripped-back and deeply intimate track that captures the emotional core of the project. Dungeon Lane is a place Paul still sees when returning home serving as a symbolic gateway to a pre-fame world: afternoons by the Mersey, birdwatching book in hand, “smoky bars and cheap guitars”, and dreams not yet lived.

Source: thebeatles.com

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