Taylor Swift and Oh So Sure

The singer-songwriter Paul McCartney (CH, MBE) recently toured Australia, stopping off in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney (two nights), Brisbane, the Gold Coast, and even Newcastle. Younger Quadrant readers may remember “Macca” (not to be confused with Macca’s) as a member of a long-haired skiffle band from Liverpool that enjoyed some passing success in the 1960s before its members went on to pursue even more successful solo careers. By all accounts, the eighty-one-year-old Macca is still sprightly (I think that’s the right word for an octogenarian rocker), still popular, and still magnificently long-maned. He ploughed through thirty-nine songs in his Sydney set, starting with “Can’t Buy Me Love” and ending with “The End”, a fifteen-word ditty that just pips William Carlos Williams’s poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” for teenage memorisability.

Sir Macca played to sold-out crowds numbering in the tens of thousands, then travelled onward to play even bigger…