Remembering When a Rare Clunker LP From Paul McCartney Got Lost in 80s Excess in 1986

Paul McCartney has released 27 albums in the pop music genre since the dissolution of The Beatles. It’s a testament to McCartney’s brilliance that precious few of them have less-than-stellar reputations.

Press To Play, released in 1986, represents one of the few Macca albums that the consensus believes is a clunker. His attempts to record it using the most up-to-the-minute production trends did it no favors.

In Need of a Hit

Paul McCartney hit the middle of the 80s looking for a new direction. After the triumph of Tug Of War in 1982, his work had stagnated a bit. Press To Play, from 1983, was mostly a collection of lesser songs from the Tug Of War sessions. And the soundtrack to Give My Regards To Broad Street, his ill-advised move into filmmaking, relied heavily on retreads from his back catalog.

Critical scorn of his work, which he’d largely held in abeyance since Wings found their footing with Band On The Run in 1973, was once again rising. McCartney saw no other choice than to try something different and shake things up.

Enter producer Hugh Padgham. Considering the massive success Padgham had enjoyed throughout the decade shepherding works by The Police, Genesis, and Phil Collins to the top of the charts, he seemed like an excellent choice to helm the McCartney album Press To Play, released in 1986. But the pairing turned out to be a bit of a mismatch.

A New Collaborator

Padgham didn’t feel all that strongly about the songs that McCartney brought to the project, many of which he’d written with former 10cc member Eric Stewart. It also wasn’t a good sign when Padgham and Stewart immediately clashed in the studio, leaving the latter’s involvement in the recording very much diminished.

McCartney agreed with Padgham’s assessment that the songs required modern recording techniques. But the busy nature of the recordings somewhat distracted from McCartney’s natural melodic gifts. In its finished version, many of the songs on Press To Play feel like dance remixes lacking original versions.

The public response to the record was chilly. Manic lead single “Press” didn’t make it to the Top 20 in either the US or UK, and the follow-ups sank without a trace. Album sales weren’t a patch on the typical McCartney release. Meant to rejuvenate McCartney’s flailing status, the album did just the opposite.

Meet the ‘Press’

There are moments of Press To Play where you can hear the kind of alchemy that McCartney and Padgham were trying to conjure. “Stranglehold” and “Move Over Busker” deliver boisterous energy and plentiful hooks, even if they’re a tad overdone. Too often, however, the tracks come off like productions in search of a song, as the writing wasn’t quite up to the usual standards.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that the ballad “Only Love Remains”, the album’s finest moment by a wide stretch, seems beamed in from another project. At least the sessions also produced “Spies Like Us”, a soundtrack hit for Macca a year before this album was released.

It would be the only time that McCartney worked with Padgham. In 1989, he found his footing again, with a little help from Elvis Costello, on the standout Flowers In The Dirt. Press To Play, meanwhile, represents a swing and a miss, even if it was a gutty swing to take.

(Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images)