Honestly, sometimes I despair at the elitist critics who go on about how great 'good, honest, rock'n'roll' is, and then at the same time extoll angst, alienation and seriousness as essential to the music. Not that 'serious', tormented songs aren't good- often they can be quite powerful, but originally rock'n'roll was fun, not meaningful. Paul McCartney got a lot of stick from critics for releasing an album that was silly and fun- complete anathema to them. It was, and is, also musically brilliant pop music. The chord-changes, song sections, and hooks are vintage McCartney, although "The Back Seat of My Car" is a successful copping of the Brian Wilson style of composition. (McCartney was and is a huge fan of "Pet Sounds") The reason why this isn't quite as good as the best Beatles albums isn't that these songs are of significantly lower quality than the songs he did for the White Album and Abbey Road. In fact, these songs remind me a lot of those songs. And they aren't really more slapdash, silly or whimsical than a lot of his late Beatles songs. Imagine, though, putting together all the McCartney songs on the White Album, and a couple from Abbey Road, together on one album, and you'll get an album sounding a lot like this one. Great, yet missing the Lennon and Harrison songs to balance them out.