Another Lennon-McCartney Original: James McCartney Teams with Sean Ono Lennon on "Primrose Hill"

James McCartney and Sean Ono Lennon team on the tender “Primrose Hill,” marking their first co-write – but not their first collaboration – in a dual family history that is immortalized in the annals of music history. In the summer of 1957, two schoolboys played hooky and scrawled a song in a composition book. They’d only recently learned of each other’s songwriting hobby and, in a sendup of the Rodgers-and-Hammerstein duos of the day, decided to signify their collaboration as a portentous moment. Atop the page they wrote the title, “Too Bad About Sorrows,” and a caption: ‘Another Lennon-McCartney original.’

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Stream: “Primrose Hill” – James McCartney

Many composition books, one legendary partnership and an additional generation later, a new Lennon-McCartney team has made its debut as James McCartney released “Primrose Hill” to streaming on April 12, 2024.

A lilting acoustic ballad punctuated by lush strings, McCartney’s new track features double-tracked vocals and a tender reminisce on early love:

We laid on Primrose Hill,
didn’t know it still, you meant what you said
An overcast sultry day,
I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know what to say
We laid there, forgot everything, kissed beneath the stars
Shooting to the hill the stars exploded into a flame
Always remember Primrose Hill

Primrose Hill - James McCartney, Sean Ono Lennon — Primrose Hill – James McCartney, Sean Ono Lennon

McCartney shared on Twitter that his lyrical sentiment was inspired by a childhood vision on his family’s farm in Scotland. “Letting go, I saw my true love and saviour in my mind’s eye.” The second single in this album cycle, “Primrose Hill” follows the moody “Beautiful,” co-written and produced by one Paul McCartney. (Paul has written at least a handful of songs since co-penning “Too Bad About Sorrows”).

The track comes in the wake of two very tender public statements by the younger Lennon-McCartneys, each about their parents- but not the set one might expect. Sean Ono Lennon, accepting the Oscar for best animated short (War is Over, co-written by Dave Mullins), rushed over the play-off music to wish his mother Yoko Ono a happy 91st birthday/mother’s day and asked the crowd to chant “Happy Birthday, Yoko!” In an equally sweet mother’s day gesture, James McCartney recently shared a polaroid of his mom Linda atop his piano with the following caption:

“Mum always inspired me to love life to the max and sing from my heart. There was a time I thought I better not think of her dying, as it would happen. And then it did. It breaks my heart that she’s gone, but I want her to be here now, thus I pursue music, the real spirituality in my life.⁣”

Linda and Yoko both feature on the rare Lennon-McCartney family collaboration, the Ono-penned “Hiroshima Sky is Always Blue.” To date, it is the only instrumental collaboration between Sean and James, on harpsichord and guitar respectively; Sean is credited only as a writer on Primrose Hill.

Yoko Ono and Linda McCartney pictured in 1969 and 1995, photographed by Mary McCartney at Hog Hill Mill Studios, Sussex © Aidan Moyer

Given the historical weight of their namesakes, there is an implicit fanfare and built-in expectation for a Lennon-McCartney co-bill (in this case, McCartney-Lennon). The notion of a “Sons of Beatles” act has been batted around by the younger McCartney in interviews, beginning with a Dhani Harrison guitar cameo on his 2016 song “Too Hard.” The notion can prove tempting when selfies of musical forty-somethings emerge in various permutations and resemble The Act You’ve Known For All These Years. However, Zak Starkey, Ringo Starrchild and live drummer extraordinaire for the Who and Oasis, said the following in November of last year:

“If we had spent 3 years sleeping on flea infested mattresses in the back room of a Hamburg club it might have chemistry – but we have been swaddled in silken robes in houses so big that it’s too far to go and make a piece of toast – seen?”

So there.

As it stands, “Primrose Hill” serves as a strong entry in the James McCartney catalog and a delightful music history curio in the ever-unraveling tapestry of pop’s greatest songbook saga. Sean Ono Lennon is active in the Claypool-Lennon Delirium, GOASTT and countless solo efforts and collaborations ranging from Miley Cyrus and Mark Ronson to Lana Del Rey and-as both have teased intermittently-his half-brother Julian Lennon. James McCartney has released several albums and EPs since contributing guitar to both his father’s “Flaming Pie” and his mother’s posthumous “Wide Prairie.” Wherever “Part II” of this saga may lead, the weight of Yoko Ono and Linda McCartney’s creative daring and singularity of vision is sure to echo. Their legacies are indelible.