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Kisses on the Bottom?is McCartney's 16^th solo album, and the first to be composed almost entirely of songs written by others. By choosing material from the great American songbook, McCartney joins a group of 1960s and '70s pop singers who have discovered just how rewarding?musically, critically and commercially?this particular sentimental journey can be. Rod Stewart, Carly Simon, Natalie Cole, and Linda Ronstadt have recorded, between them, no fewer than a dozen such albums. For each of the singers, these releases have served as well-timed career-resuscitators, allowing the aging artists?whose hit-making days have, for the most part, long since passed?to earn platinum sales and sell out giant arenas.

In interviews and press releases, these artists invariably?describe?having??grown up??with this music; often they hint at an innocent youth spent in some prelapsarian Tin Pan Eden, where they learned these songs at their daddy's knee before getting older and guiltily partaking of the rock-and-roll apple. But there's another, more self-serving reason that a particular type of superannuated rocker likes to put out an album of standards. These songs?penned by Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Rodgers & Hart (or Hammerstein) to name just a few of their most famous composers?represent the sturdy foundation on which all popular music is based. If you're a pop singer or songwriter concerned about your legacy, linking yourself to the great American songbook confers a kind of late-stage artisanal legitimacy onto your entire career. It shows that you, too, have always possessed a deep and sophisticated understanding of authentic songcraft. If you're worried that the world may remember you primarily for wearing Spandex pants and snarling "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?," what better penance than to croon "Isn't It Romantic?" in a rakish coat and tie, carried along by a lush string section?

With few exceptions, however, these albums of standards by pop superstars?d'un certain ?ge?fall flat. I confess that even the McCartney album,?pace?Holden, leaves me shrugging my shoulders and wondering if it was really worth all the trouble. Why is this? The source material is unquestionably superb. (McCartney, to his great credit, has chosen to cover several lesser-known songs that would fly right under the radar of a Stewart or a Simon, who tend to go straight for the crowd-pleasers.) No one would deny that the artists themselves have real talent. So: good songs, good singers?where do things go wrong?

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