Paul McCartney wasn’t exactly in the commercial doldrums in 1989, but he certainly understood ignominy was within his grasp. Press to Play, his 1986 album, generated no real hits to speak of. George Harrison—the young kid he brought into the Beatles back in 1958—bested Paul in 1987 with Cloud Nine, an album that contained the number one smash “Got My Mind Set on You” and a lesser hit called “When We Was Fab,” an affectionate nod to his time as a Moptop that played right into the lingering nostalgia from the 20th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band* *in ’87.
Savvy as ever, McCartney decided it was time to strengthen his ties to his Beatles past on Flowers in the Dirt, the 1989 record that effectively opens the third act in his monumental career. McCartney designed Flowers in the Dirt to be taken out on the road in his first international tour in over a decade and while that in itself would’ve been a noteworthy event, he realized he should have a record to peddle as well. He’d been working on new songs but the project came into focus when his management suggested it might be a good idea to team with Elvis Costello, the former punk who had been a card-carrying member of the Beatles fan club since he was a kid.
Most of the contemporary press regarding Flowers in the Dirt highlighted the collaboration between Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello, positioning Costello as the salt to McCartney’s sugar. Comparisons to John Lennon were encouraged, as the publicity team pushed the idea that the songwriters composed “eyeball to eyeball,” just like the two Beatles did at the start of their career. Costello encouraged McCartney to dig out his iconic Höfner bass—he hadn’t used it since the Beatles—and the two wrote enough material to constitute a full record. But after initial sessions with Costello as a producer didn’t go as expected, Paul sought out other options, bringing in a bevy of producers (Micthell Froom, David Foster, Steve Lipson, and Trevor Horn) to help cast as wide of a net as possible with these songs. With McCartney also behind the boards, there was no shortage of cooks in the kitchen.
So it’s no wonder that things rarely cohere. “My Brave Face,” one of the four McCartney/Costello compositions (“Où Est le Soleil?,” originally a bonus track on the cassette and CD versions, is now officially canon), opens the album with a melodic punch. Any momentum it provides is crushed by the stiff synth-funk of “Rough Ride,” a Lipson/Horn production that should’ve been relegated to a B-side but instead exists as the worst second track ever released on an album. From there, Flowers in the Dirt proceeds in fits and starts, sometimes achieving a small measure of grace. McCartney always excelled in familial love, so “We Got Married” and the valentine to his son “Put It There” pull on the heartstrings. But the deliberate proto-digital gloss flattens the album, softening the edges of the Costello collaborations and disguising the loveliness of such sweet miniatures as “Distractions.”