Special Valentine’s Day Concert • Saturday, February 14, 2015

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A surprise concert officially announced on February 14, 2015 in the morning, on paulmccartney.com:

Paul has announced he will be playing a very intimate and special Valentine’s Day concert this evening – Saturday 14th February – in New York City.

The gig will take place at Irving Plaza.

There will be EXTREMELY LIMITED tickets on sale today from 10am (EST) and available ONLY through The Irving Plaza Box Office. Tickets can only be purchased using cash and are limited to one per person.

From paulmccartney.com, February 16, 2015:

Fans will have seen that Paul had a great GRAMMY weekend. The world premiere performance of his ‘FourFiveSeconds’ collaboration with Rihinna and Kanye West received the thumbs up from fans and critics alike around the globe and also saw Paul trending worldwide on Twitter. 

How do you follow such a lively weekend? Always one to enjoy a fun impromptu event, Paul decided to book in a surprise Valentine’s Day show at the intimate Irving Plaza in New York City! 

The gig was announced here at PaulMcCartney.com on Saturday morning and with only a few hundred tickets available, fans made a beeline to the venue in the hope of snapping them up. 

The gig was the hottest ticket in town on Saturday night attended by Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Bradley Cooper, Leonardo DiCaprio, Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, Steve Buscemi, Chris Rock, David Blaine, Emma Stone, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, Olivia Wilde and Gary Barlow – to name just a handful! Even US Secretary of State John Kerry turned up, as did Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels (more of which further down…).

Paul took to the stage around 11pm and played a searing 2 hour club set including dropping rose petals during ‘My Valentine’, dedicated to his wife Nancy. […]

From NYTimes:

A holiday, a song title and a free night before a TV appearance were pretext enough for Paul McCartney to book a sudden show on Saturday night at Irving Plaza; its capacity, about 1,000, is an order of magnitude smaller than the arenas he usually headlines. The audience, he said joshingly, was “so close you can see my dental work.” On Sunday, Mr. McCartney was scheduled to perform on “Saturday Night Live’s” 40th-anniversary prime-time special. But Saturday was also Valentine’s Day, and Mr. McCartney announced, “Tonight it’s all about love.”

Midway through the set, he came to “the point of this evening.” He dedicated “My Valentine,” a minor-key ballad from his 2012 album “Kisses on the Bottom,” to his wife, Nancy Shevell, and red confetti petals showered down on the sold-out crowd. “That’s the big spectacular production number of this evening,” he said afterward.

The concert, about 100 minutes long, was mostly an abridged version of the set Mr. McCartney had been performing last year on his world tour of arenas. He slipped in a few 1950s oldies he clearly admires: the Crickets’ “It’s So Easy” and, even better, Carl Perkins’s “Matchbox,” which gave him a chance to belt the blues and show off some pointed, rockabilly-rooted lead guitar. […]

Last updated on February 28, 2021

Irving Plaza

This was the 1st and only concert played at Irving Plaza.

Setlist for the concert

3.

All My Loving

Written by Lennon - McCartney

5.

Matchbox

Written by Carl Perkins

14.

We Can Work It Out

Written by Lennon - McCartney