Song Exclusive: James McCartney's 'New York Times'

James McCartney

Danny Clifford

Click to listen to James McCartney's 'New York Times'

James McCartney has a sister who's pretty well known in New York City: she's designer Stella McCartney. There's more talent in the family as well, or so we hear. "New York Times," a rocking pop song from McCartney's recent release, The Complete EP Collection, was written on a trip to the Big Apple with his father, a certain Sir Paul. "My dad said let's write a song about our trip to NYC," says the singer. "Instantaneously I came up with the main riff as he was just inches away from me." Apparently it rubs off. 

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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