Watch: The Cure covers ‘Hello Goodbye’ for Paul McCartney tribute

If there’s one thing the world doesn’t especially need right now, it’s another project designed to illuminate the genius of anybody who was in the Beatles.

And yet such projects keep coming, most recently in the form of Capitol Records’ massive “Beatles in Mono” box set, out this week (and appraised by The Times’ Randall Roberts).

We’ll get at least one more before the year is out with the release of “The Art of McCartney,” a new Paul McCartney tribute album due Nov. 18.

Announced Tuesday, the set -- assembled by Los Angeles-based producer Ralph Sall -- is to include covers of McCartney’s songs by high-profile admirers like Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Brian Wilson and Jeff Lynne.

Is their participation reason to get excited? Meh.

Yet there is something stirring about the album’s first single: an exuberant rendition of “Hello Goodbye” by the Cure, which finds the English gloom-rock veterans in an uncommonly chipper mode and features input by McCartney’s son James.

The Cure is one of a handful of relatively surprising acts due to appear on “The Art of McCartney,” along with Willie Nelson, Owl City and -- gulp -- Sammy Hagar.

So maybe there’s hope for this thing? Who knows: Maybe Hagar’s just the guy to tell us something we didn’t already know about Sir Paul.

Twitter: @mikaelwood