Song of the day for June 5, 2024
3 min read
Dance Tonight by Sir Paul McCartney is today’s featured song.
On this day in 2007 Sir Paul McCartney released his 21st solo album, ‘Memory Almost Full’ on the new Hear Music Starbucks label. The album was being played non-stop in more than 10,000 Starbucks outlets across 29 countries.
In the website constructed for the album, McCartney stated: “I actually started this album, Memory Almost Full, before my last album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, released September 2005. (…) When I was just finishing up everything concerned with Chaos and had just got the Grammy nominations (2006) I realised I had this album to go back to and finish off. So I got it out to listen to it again, wondering if I would enjoy it, but actually I really loved it. All I did at first was just listen to a couple of things and then I began to think, ‘OK, I like that track – now, what is wrong with it?’ And it might be something like a drum sound, so then I would re-drum and see where we would get to. (…) In places it’s a very personal record and a lot of it is retrospective, drawing from memory, like memories from being a kid, from Liverpool and from summers gone. The album is evocative, emotional, rocking, but I can’t really sum it up in one sentence”
The album was his first for Starbucks’ Hear Music record label, after previously having a 45-year-old relationship with Capitol/EMI. The recording contract with Capitol/EMI ended a few months prior to the release of the album, after McCartney had found out that EMI were planning to take six months to set up a promotional plan for the album. McCartney was the first artist to sign to Hear Music. The Rock Radio website leaked a track listing for the album on 12 April 2007. A day later, producer David Kahne stated on the same site that the leaked listing was bogus. The first US single, “Ever Present Past”, made its radio debut on 20 April. A music video for “Dance Tonight” premiered on 23 May via YouTube. The album was released on 4 June 2007 in the UK, and a day later on the 5th in the US, and with a vinyl edition later in the month on 25 June.
It was later announced that all copies sold through UK Starbucks would not be eligible for the UK charts as the 533 stores were not registered with the Official Chart Company.
This was also McCartney’s first album to be available as a digital download. The lead single for the rest of the world is “Dance Tonight”, released on McCartney’s 65th birthday in the UK, 18 June as a digital download, with a physical release a month later, on 23 July of a CD single and a 10″ shaped picture disc. The music video features Natalie Portman and Mackenzie Crook, and was directed by Michel Gondry. The third single, “Nod Your Head”, was released as a digital download single on 28 August via the iTunes Store. “Ever Present Past” was released as a single in the UK, on 5 November, as a CD single and 7″ single.
