Since we posted about the new Paul McCartney solo release The Boys of Dungeon Lane there’s been some developments, mostly to do with new variations and vinyl colours being added.
As we did for McCartney III and it’s sibling McCartney III Imagined, we’ve started a chart showing all the known variations so far to help you keep up. We’ll add to this if any more come down the pipeline (which, given McCartney’s track record, is very likely).
As of today a new McCartney and UME Store exclusive with 180g black vinyl, gatefold blind-embossed cover artwork, full collage interior spread, and a 12-page lyric booklet has been added to the ever-growing list. There’s now also a cassette with a fold-out collage print.
Gotta admit, the gatefold collage looks great. It is screen‑printed and made from over 100 archive images, including previously unseen photography from Paul’s personal archive.:
Along with the different cover art and vinyl colour variations, one other difficult thing emerging for the absolute completists (who must have everything in every permutation) is the different lyric cards to be included with some of the vinyl and some of the CDs.
So far there are 6 different cards: 3 “collage” lyric cards, and 3 “portrait” lyric cards.
In the green vinyl exclusive to the McCartney and Universal Music stores it is a green/purple collage card, while in the red vinyl – exclusive to larger chain stores – the card is an orange/red/blue colour with different images. It is also orange/red/blue in the Target exclusive CD, but it depicts a different collage of faces.
Then, in those releases that come with a black and white portrait of Paul, there seem to be 3 different photos in use. One for the gold vinyl (B&N, and possibly Rough Trade UK – but this is still to be confirmed); one for the green cover CD (a McCartney Store/Universal Music exclusive), and a third variation for the Walmart exclusive CD. We’ve tried to show these on the chart, but here they are side-by-side for comparison.
We’ll update this variations chart if and when any more differences emerge.
