For most artists, no song is truly complete. Even if you’ve recorded it once and been praised by millions around the world for that version, songs usually take a while to develop before they enter the studio. Some people spend months or years working on a song, but at the end of Off the Ground, Paul McCartney revealed a song he began during his time with The Beatles.
By the time McCartney entered the 1990s, he had already gone through one of his strangest periods in his career. After re-emerging as one of the world’s biggest pop stars in the early 1980s as a result of collaborations with Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, projects like Give My Regards to Broad Street weren’t exactly what he needed to stay popular with kids.
McCartney came dangerously close to sounding like a toothless middle-aged musician on albums such as Press to Play. However, he rediscovered his muse when collaborating with new wave icon Elvis Costello. Working on the album Flowers in the Dirt, Costello would frequently play the cynical foil to McCartney. The former Beatle recalled that it was one of his closest collaborations since John Lennon.
Despite his attempts to distance himself from The Beatles’ legacy since 1970, McCartney re-entered the fashion scene around 1993. While grunge remained as popular as ever, the emerging Britpop scene was on the horizon. It prompted new bands like Oasis and Blur to regard The Beatles as one of the coolest bands again.
Throughout Off the Ground, Paul McCartney returns to familiar territory. He wrote pop-rock songs that would not have been out of place in 1966. Costello may have contributed to a few songs, but songs like the title track and ‘Hope of Deliverance‘ were a bit more in tune with what McCartney was doing in his glory days, the latter of which sounded closer to Wings’ finest moments.
After concluding the album with the song ‘C’Mon People‘, there is a brief pause before the slow strains of the hidden track ‘Cosmically Conscious‘ begin playing. Unlike the other new songs on the album, this one began in 1968, during The Beatles‘ meditation retreat in India.
McCartney, who studied under the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, drew inspiration for the song’s title from one of the guru’s teachings. The result sounds like a fusion of 1960s psychedelic pop and 1990s modern production. Fans heard only a snippet on the album, but the deluxe edition featured a complete run-through. This serves as a lost Beatles song that fans had never heard before.
But the question remains: would this have appeared on The White Album? Given George Harrison’s penchant for writing spiritual songs, hearing McCartney experiment with introspective lyrics about life would have been far more interesting than having to slog through ‘Wild Honey Pie‘. The Beatles may have always been about compromise. However, most fans would have preferred the double album experience over ‘Revolution 9‘.
