''McCartney III Imagined'' is a

remix album A remix album is an album consisting of remixes or rerecorded versions of an artist's earlier released material. The first act who employed the format was American singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson (''Aerial Pandemonium Ballet'', 1971). As of 2007 ...

of songs from '' McCartney III'', the 18th solo album by English musician

Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...

. It was released digitally on 16 April 2021, with a physical version released on 23 July. It features remixes by numerous artists. The tracks were curated by McCartney, featuring "friends, fans, and brand new acquaintances".McCartney III Imagined – CD
paulmccartney.com. Retrieved 20 March 2021.

Dominic Fike Dominic David Fike (born December 30, 1995) is an American singer, songwriter, and actor. Fike first received recognition after releasing several popular songs to the website SoundCloud. Following the release of his debut extended play, '' Don't ...

's version of "The Kiss of Venus" was released as the first single, followed by

Beck Beck David Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his Experimental music, experimental and Lo-fi music, lo-fi style, and became ...

's version of "Find My Way" and EOB's version of "Slidin'". Coinciding with its release, McCartney had live conversations via

Instagram Live Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can be ...

with several contributors. The album received positive reviews. Following ''McCartney III'' accomplishing the same feat, it became the first remix album to top ''Billboard''s Top Album Sales Chart in more than a decade, also becoming number 1 on the Rock Albums and Vinyl Albums charts.

Background

For ''McCartney III Imagined'', McCartney enlisted numerous collaborators to remix and perform songs from the album, including: Beck, Dominic Fike,

Khruangbin Khruangbin ( ; , เครื่องบิน) is an American musical trio from Houston, Texas. The band comprises Laura Lee (bassist), Laura Lee on bass, Mark Speer on guitar, and Donald "DJ" Johnson Jr. on drums. The band is known for blend ...

St. Vincent Saint Vincent may refer to: People Saints * Vincent of Saragossa (died 304), a.k.a. Vincent the Deacon, deacon and martyr * Saint Vincenca, 3rd century Roman martyress, whose relics are in Blato, Croatia * Vincent, Orontius, and Victor (died 305) ...

Dev Hynes Devonté Hynes (born David Joseph Michael Hynes, 23 December 1985), also known as Blood Orange and formerly Lightspeed Champion, is an English singer, songwriter, record producer and director based in New York City. From 2004 to 2006, Hynes was ...

Phoebe Bridgers Phoebe Lucille Bridgers (born August 17, 1994) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. She has released two solo albums, ''Stranger in the Alps'' (2017) and ''Punisher'' (2020), both of which received critical acclaim ...

Ed O'Brien Edward John O'Brien (born 15 April 1968) is an English guitarist, songwriter and member of the rock band Radiohead. He releases solo music under the name EOB. O'Brien attended Abingdon School in Oxfordshire, England, where he met the other mem ...

Damon Albarn Damon Albarn (; born 23 March 1968) is an English-Icelandic musician, singer-songwriter and composer, best known as the frontman and primary lyricist of the rock band Blur and as the co-creator and primary musical contributor of the virtual ...

Josh Homme Joshua Michael Homme ( ; born May 17, 1973) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He is best known as the founder, primary songwriter, and only continuous member of the rock band Queens of the Stone Age, which he form ...

, Anderson .Paak,

Robert Del Naja Robert Del Naja (; born 21 January 1965), also known as 3D, is a British artist, musician, singer and songwriter. He emerged as a graffiti artist and member of the Bristol collective the Wild Bunch, and later as a founding member and sole consi ...

, and

Idris Elba Idrissa Akuna Elba (; born 6 September 1972) is an English actor.

Critical reception

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, ''McCartney III Imagined'' has an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 76, based on 11 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Aggregator

AnyDecentMusic? AnyDecentMusic? is a website that collates album reviews from magazines, websites, and newspapers. Primarily focused on popular music – covering rock, pop, electronic, dance, folk, country, roots, hip-hop, R&B, and rap – albums are adjudg ...

gave the album 7 out of 10, based on its assessment of the critical consensus.

Track listing

All tracks are written by Paul McCartney.

Charts

References

{{Paul McCartney 2021 remix albums Paul McCartney albums Capitol Records remix albums Remix albums by English artists