Paul McCartney says he still doesn’t “get” influencer culture as he readies new solo album

Paul McCartney says he still can’t make much sense of “a lot of this influencer stuff,” even as it continues to orbit everyday life online. The 83-year-old former Beatle, who is preparing to release his new solo album The Boys Of Dungeon Lane later this month, admitted in a new conversation that the appeal of social media fame largely escapes him.

Speaking to The Rest is Entertainment, he was asked to weigh in on modern trends and the rise of influencer culture, a world he views with a kind of bemused distance. “I think a lot of this influencer stuff… I just don’t really get it because I’m not that generation,” he said. “But you can’t help seeing it. My wife will be looking at Instagram and showing me something, and then one of those will come on.

“I think it’s funny and I suppose it always happened, but people who don’t seem to be particularly talented are incredibly famous. Billions of hits and views.”

He followed that by acknowledging the obvious generational gap, adding that he feels he has “got to be careful about saying that” because it makes him sound “very old-fashioned…Which I am.” It is the sort of remark only McCartney can make without it sounding like a complaint so much as a shrug.

That irritation, mild though it is, sits alongside a more familiar McCartney theme: the strange longevity of fame, and the way his own career has continued to land across generations. He reflected on the origins of that ambition in practical terms, going back to school days and the ordinary desire to move upward. “Think about it, what were we doing when we started? We’re at school, you go to the careers master and he tells you you’re hopeless – there’s nothing out there for you. And then you get in a group and start to do well,” he said.

“What is it you’re looking for? Approval. Money. To get out of your circumstances and rise in the world. I don’t think there’s any point being shy about that. I think everyone knows. If you’re in a job, you want a promotion,” he added, before pointing to the grounding force of his upbringing. “I was very lucky – I came from a very loving family of very smart working-class people. And I always say to people: don’t underestimate the working class.”

McCartney has been talking about Liverpool for years, and the city remains central to how he frames both the Beatles story and his own. In a 2018 interview with NME, he recalled returning to his hometown and driving familiar routes from childhood, often giving passengers what amounted to an impromptu guided tour.

“It’s great for me going back to Liverpool, going back to my childhood places,” he said. “I always drive myself around, and I’ll drive people on a route which was my bus route from school, one from Speke and one from Allerton.

“Whoever’s in the car gets the tourist trip past my old house, which is now a National Trust thing, and I’ll go, ‘There’s my bedroom there, that was the alleyway round the back that we called The Jigger,’ and all these things come flooding back.

“So that’s what it was like at The Cavern. It makes you play better, I think, being back in a little club like that, inches from your audience. It reminds you of how it was.”

The Boys Of Dungeon Lane is due out on May 29, with a pre-order available here: pre-order here. The album includes “Home To Us,” a duet with Ringo Starr that marks the first time the two have recorded a vocal collaboration together. It also features Texas singer Sharleen Spiteri and Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders, folding those guest appearances into a record explicitly tied to McCartney’s Liverpool roots.

Separately, 3 Savile Row in London’s Mayfair, the address forever associated with The Beatles’ 1969 rooftop concert, is set to open to the public next year as the first official Beatles fan experience. Visitors will be able to move through seven floors of archives and exhibitions, and the Let It Be studio will also be recreated.