Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Paul McCartney Available Now
The best tracks on McCartney’s first album have the quality of LIVE MUSIC in a way that not one out of a hundred rock records do. It sounds like it’s recorded live in the studio, but of course that’s impossible, because Paul plays practically all the instruments himself.
It just goes to show how good a multi-track studio recording can sound when it’s done well.
The recording also has an unprocessed quality which we’ve always found attractive, with some songs sounding more like demos than finished takes, about as far from Abbey Road as it would be possible to get.
In our experience, the real McCartney Magic is only found on the best domestic Apple pressings. We’ve never heard an import that did much for us, and the later CBS issues are hardly worth the vinyl they’re pressed on.
This album, like Unplugged and Band on the Run (and not a whole lot else) is SUPERB from start to finish. At the end of side two you want MORE. I wish I could say that about the rest of his discography.
McCartney Checks Off Some Big Boxes for Us
It’s a Must Own record.
It’s a Rock and Pop Masterpiece.
And it’s a personal favorite of mine, one which I have been obsessed with since I first discovered how well recorded the album was sometime in the early 90s.
The blog you are on now as well as our website are both devoted to very special records such as these.
In my opinion, this is also a record that should be more popular with audiophiles. If you have not heard this classic, check it out.
It is the very definition of a big speaker album. The better pressings have the kind of ENERGY in their grooves that are sure to leave most audiophile systems begging for mercy.
This is The Audio Challenge that awaits you. If you don’t have a system designed to play records with this kind of size and power, don’t expect to hear them the way McCartney, engineer Robin Black and anybody else involved in the production wanted you to.
Want to find your own killer copy?
Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that tend to win our shootouts.
As of 2026, shootouts for this album should be carried out:
Nothing else will do for a big, dynamic, powerful recording such as this.
Which simply means that the early Apple label domestic pressings win the shootouts, without exception.
McCartney’s first solo album is one of the records that helped us dramatically improve the quality of our playback, along with scores of others you can read about here on the blog.