Chaos and Creation in the Backyard Released in the States

Yep, that's right. Sir Paul McCartney's new album, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard is released to record shops and retail outlets today. Be sure to pick it up! The regular edition is number 2 on Amazon.com and the special edition is #11. I'm predicting that the album will debut in the top 10. However, it would be nice if my generation stopped downloading illegally.

Senator Bayh wrote an article in the Huffington Post. Be sure to check it out.

B.B. King has a new album out and he's getting by with a little help from his friends. The bluesman guitarist will be turning 80 this Friday. Have a happy early birthday, B.B. King!

The Boston Globe reviews Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.

The song "Friends to Go" was inspired by George Harrison. "On that one I very much referred to George, so much so that I almost felt that George was writing it. There was a certain melody and chord changes that for some reason reminded me of George...And lyrically, too. Listen to it and imagine George's voice singing, 'I've been sliding down a slippery slope / I've been climbing up a slowly burning rope but the flame is getting low.' I could see George having written that."

Harrison isn't the only late Beatle who's influenced the album, McCartney says.

"I do refer in my mind to John [Lennon]," he says. "If your parents passed away, you might still think, 'Well, what would my dad think of this?' Or, 'What would my mom have thought?' In my case, because I write, the natural person I would refer to in my mind would be John...I don't do it all of the time, but often I can be just thinking about a song and go back to how John and I would have dealt with it."

For his tour, which begins Friday, McCartney has lined up two corporate sponsors to defray production costs: Fidelity Investments and Lexus.

"The difficulty for me is getting involved with a good sponsor that I can be proud of," McCartney says. "We don't really know [Fidelity] over in England, but my promoter for the tour said they're really great...It has to be something that I believe in." As for Lexus, he says, "I'm getting involved with their new hybrid [car]...and I was told that all of Lexus's cars are going to be hybrids in the next 10 years."

McCartney is 63 and has toured more in the past few years than he has for a couple of decades. He says that it's partly because he loves his band -- and that he has again fallen in love with his work. Expect no farewell tour yet.

"Are you kidding? I'm not giving this up," he says. "They're going to have to pull me out screaming. People say to me, 'Why do you do it? You've written enough songs.' But I say, 'I know I have, but it's my hobby and I'm lucky enough to get to do my job as a hobby.'"

Time to start saving up for McCartney's next tour, an electronic piano, and a car.

Jonathan Takiff of the Philadelphia Daily News gives the album an A!. The Chicago Tribune does just as good of a job in their review. St. Louis Post-Dispatch also awards the album with an A in their review.