Paul McCartney Dusts Off ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ With Youth Choir In Liverpool

Paul McCartney returned home last night for a performance at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, England. Macca recruited the youngsters from the LIPA Choir for the first in-concert rendition of his holiday song, “Wonderful Christmastime” since 2012 as part of the evening’s encore.

The three-hour, sold-out concert featured a total of 40 songs spanning nearly every era of the musician’s career. McCartney did keep to a similar setlist as other stops on his Freshen Up tour. The big difference came during the eight-song encore. After opening the final portion of the show with “Birthday” and welcoming a pair of concert winners from Finland to help sing the Beatles classic “I Saw Her Standing There,” Paul led his band through “Wonderful Christmastime.”

Artificial snow fell on the capacity crowd as McCartney & Co. worked through their first version of the holiday gem since a 2016 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The last time Macca performed the 1979 single at one of his concerts was way back on November 29, 2012 in Edmonton, Alberta. A youth choir from the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts emerged following the line “the choir of children sing their song” and contributed to the rest of “Wonderful Christmastime.” Watch fan-shot video of the bust out captured by M. Steiner:

McCartney went on work through “Helter Skelter” and then ended the hometown concert with the end of the Abbey Road suite, including “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight” and “The End.” In other Macca news, Paul recently added a show at the SAP Center in San Jose, California to the U.S. portion of his 2019 tour on July 10. Tickets go on sale to the general public on Monday, December 17 at 10 a.m. PT via Ticketmaster.

Setlist