The crowd at the State Farm Arena didn’t just get a concert Monday night. It got a living, breathing history lesson delivered by the man who helped write the soundtrack of the modern world. The second of two sold-out shows in Atlanta went nearly three hours, but no one checked their watch—not when you’re watching time itself walk across the stage holding a Höfner bass and smiling like he’s still the luckiest kid in Liverpool.

What’s astonishing about Paul McCartney in 2025 isn’t that he can still do this; it’s that he still loves doing it. You could see the passion is still there. He doesn’t need to be doing this, he surely doesn’t need to do it for three hours, but there is something about his legacy that he needs to show to the world, and it was a true gift to get to experience. The voice, more textured and human now, carries every decade inside it; behind him stands a band that isn’t just tight—they’re family. Paul “Wix” Wickens on keyboards, shaping the sound and steering the ship as musical director. Rusty Anderson firing off guitar lines like sparks from a welding torch. Brian Ray swapping seamlessly between guitar and bass, filling every corner of the mix. And Abe Laboriel Jr., pounding drums with joyful force, a locomotive in human form. Together, they don’t just back McCartney—they lift him, surprise him, and play these impossible, ageless songs in a way that still makes strangers throw their arms around each other without asking names.

McCartney didn’t draw neat borders between eras. Beatles classics slid into Wings swagger, which melted into solo tenderness. One minute the arena was thundering like a jet runway, the next you could hear people crying. The room swelled, shrank, and then swelled again, like lungs breathing in the last 65 years of music. The crowd skewed older, but a great mixture of younger fans were there, getting a chance to experience the legend as well. The night didn’t stay in the realm of nostalgia. McCartney is too aware, too present, too rooted in the idea that songs are only worth anything if they still mean something now.

Mid-show, after a run of Beatles crowd-pleasers, McCartney—always the great storyteller—told a story that hit the room like a lightning strike. He spoke about the Beatles’ first U.S. tour, their arrival in the South, and discovering, with shock and disgust, that their Alabama concert was segregated. “We’d never seen anything like it,” he said, shaking his head. “Black people on one side, white people on the other. And they told us, ‘That’s how it is here.’ And we said, ‘Well, that’s not how it’s going to be.’ So we refused to play. They integrated the audience. And after that, we put it into our rider: no segregation, anywhere.”

The arena went silent—not out of politeness, but reverence. Because it wasn’t a boast. It was a reminder: a band barely out of their teens, halfway around the world, insisted on human dignity and forced change with guitars and stubbornness. Power used the right way. Then he strummed the next chord, and the room erupted—not just with cheers, but with respect. Today, bands are shunned for their politics; the Beatles just did what was right.

There was another quiet devastation later in the set. The screens flickered with grainy footage of the 1969 rooftop concert, and McCartney began “I’ve Got a Feeling.” When the time came for John’s verse, Paul stepped back, let the music swell, and John Lennon’s voice, beamed in across decades, filled the arena. Paul watched the screen as he sang, and what was once film became resurrection. You could feel 20,000 people absorb the weight of it: friendship, grief, survival, art stronger than loss. When the song ended, McCartney looked out at the crowd and said softly, “I love doing that. It lets me sing with John again.” Not a line, just a truth.

Later came the tribute to George Harrison, delivered not with bombast but with tenderness. McCartney picked up a ukulele—one of George’s—and the room leaned in. He started small, plucking the melody of “Something” as if singing to an old friend. Halfway through, the band joined, the tempo lifted, and suddenly the arena was awash in George’s warmth: melodic, hopeful, unmistakably Harrison. You could see it on Paul’s face: not performance, but love. From there, the show took flight. Wings anthems turned the arena into a massive barroom choir. Beatles staples lifted people out of their seats. And when “Hey Jude” arrived—not sung, but shared—it felt less like a song and more like a collective heartbeat. Twenty thousand voices, strangers and families, arms thrown over shoulders, singing not because they were told to, but because it felt necessary.

McCartney’s show felt important. It had so much weight. In three hours, he reminded Atlanta of the humanity wired into his catalog. With every song, I could hear the impact it had on millions of people and how much change it inspired. As “Helter Skelter” and “Live and Let Die” blasted, I marveled at just how “metal” they seemed. Just as that thought touched my brain, explosions and flames erupted from the stage. McCartney was leaving it all on the stage. He didn’t ask the crowd to worship the past. He asked them to feel it, carry it, and maybe live it again. When the final chords of the Abbey Road suite rang out—“Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight,” “The End”—it didn’t feel like closure. It felt like a handoff. Like he was giving the world back to us a little softer, a little kinder, a little more awake. And he walked off the Atlanta stage the same way he walked on: smiling, grateful, and somehow still searching for the next melody.

I will be honest, my knees were feeling it after standing for three hours, and the moment that thought hit me, I looked at Paul and saw the energy. I have no clue how he does it, but the sold-out crowd was truly blessed. A reminder of what music can do when someone refuses to shrink from the weight of it. This is surely the can’t-miss concert of the year.