Over the course of 2020, my friend Matthew Restall, author of the brilliant Blue Moves book in the 33 1/3 series & I (Hope) started spontaneously breaking down Paul McCartney’s entire post-Beatle discography as if we were writing an actual essay (like you do, if you are a nerd). Well, turns out we were. Welcome to The Wonder Of It All, a 4-part series featuring our endlessly unspooling, unhinged, proudly contrarian, ridiculous & heartfelt correspondence regarding the Macca solo catalog. Ram On…
It’s A Fine Line: Just a note on the format of this essay, Matthew and I are going to be taking turns spilling our McCartney guts and our names will appear before our respective comments. Our album rating system is the classic best of 10, the pinnacle being 10 (it’s brilliant), the bottom being 1 (it’s terrible). Our opinions will diverge at points but we are as one in our love of Macca.
2000-2020: Driving Rain to III…
MATTHEW: Cliche alert: happy artists make trite art, and the best stuff is made by miserable bastards. Happy Adele? Snore. Broken-hearted Adele? Now we’re talking. Yet I never believed that Macca had a silly love songs problem in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. Nor did I imagine that the root of such a problem, had it existed, was his long and happy marriage. After all, I love “Silly Love Songs.” But then Paul’s happy streak hit some unimaginably tough twists and turns. In the decade following Flaming Pie, his “Lovely Linda” lost her hard-fought cancer battle, George Harrison died, and Paul’s new marriage ended after just a few years. Was there enough misery in there to temper the silly love and inspire some stirring new songs? Oh yes. Three albums of them. Three great albums. Three of his best.
And that wasn’t all. Sir Paul’s creative output this century has been extraordinary. And considering these are his senior years (he turned the Fab age of 64 in 2006), his productivity seems superhuman. We may be less enamored of his ‘10s than his ‘00s pop albums, but we’re still bowled over by the sum total.
Driving Rain (2001)
MATTHEW: Driving Rain (2001), 9/10: When Paul released his Pure compilation in 2016, Paul Sinclair of Super Deluxe Edition took a look back at Macca’s solo career; I usually agree with Sinclair’s opinions, but he judged Driving Rain as “frankly awful,” the worst album in the catalogue, with not one good track on it. I was stunned. Because I LOVE this album. I still remember the first time I played the CD, in my car; I sat in the parking lot at work unable to bring myself to stop listening. Macca was channeling his grief over Linda’s passing and his joy over meeting Heather through his well-honed pop filter, and the result was totally captivating. For me then, and now, there’s not a duff song on here. And despite its length, it doesn’t tail off at the end, only getting better. The sole blemish is the hidden extra track, recorded and added at the last minute in response to 9/11 (“Freedom” is indeed “frankly awful”). I don’t remember Rain getting bad reviews when it came out, but I do recall it selling poorly, and scathing reviews of it are not hard to find (Ultimate Classic Rock, like the aforementionedSDE, ranks it as Macca’s worst, #21 of 21). I guess there’s no accounting for taste; in this case, mine. I hear an hour of strong, intimate, engaging tunes, and I honestly feel bad for those who don’t.
HOPE: Driving Rain (2001), 8/10: Driving Rain remains one of the most hated and maligned albums of Paul’s solo years. And let’s be frank, whether or not people want to admit it, the disdain for the album has less to do with the actual songs than the person who inspired their creation, Paul’s then new wife Heather Mills. To which I say, who cares. He was in love and this album has some absolutely kick ass songs; why should it matter who the source of inspiration was? If you are craving sticky and swoon-some style melodies like the kind that dominated most Macca albums in the ‘70s and early ‘80s then you should absolutely spend some time with Driving Rain. It is full of fabulous hooks, from the punchy loved-up title track to the gloriously Nilsson-esque “Your Loving Flame” to the rainy day balladry of “From A Lover To A Friend” to the Wings flavored “Magic”. Point is, there’s a lot to love here, a helluva a lot more than there is on the far more heralded Flowers in the Dirt. And for historical purposes, I will concur with Matthew in regards to “Freedom” and state that while it has genuinely good intentions it is also unequivocally terrible.
Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005)
HOPE: Chaos And Creation In The Backyard (2005), 7/10: Chaos And Creation is one of the most traditionally Beatle-esque albums of Paul’s solo career, its best tracks sounding like not so distant relations of Macca’s White Album contributions. It is also home to a straight-up, deep cut classic and what I regard as Paul’s absolute finest 21st century track. “Riding To Vanity Fair” is a clear-eyed, pragmatic and world weary ballad that’s flexible enough to accommodate the story of a friendship ending or the inability to be friends after a relationship has imploded. Either way, it’s an unadulterated, underrated beauty in the tradition of mist-inducing ballads like “Dear Friend” and “Love In Song” and I still swoon when it enters the room. While the album’s opening track and first single “Fine Line” is supremely bouncy and features an undeniably nifty piano based hook, the best tracks on Chaos are the ones with the most mournful melodies (“At The Mercy” and “How Kind Of You”). Chaos is a cloudy, wanting and lovely thing.
MATTHEW: Chaos And Creation In The Backyard (2005), 10/10: Paul has said that during the period of this great trio of albums (Rain, Chaos, and Memory), he never tossed out a song because his personal life had taken a new turn. So the songs take us to various points on his emotional roller coaster, but we cannot always be sure which ones; we can only guess at whom or what he is mourning, which love he is giddy over, what loss he is processing. For me, that—plus Paul’s undying gift for melody—makes Chaos one of his very best albums. As Hope says, it’s Beatle-esque, with all the praise that implies. Ten of its tracks are in my Macca Top 100, and I might as well have put the whole album in. Without the eccentricities that made most of his previous albums either annoyingly or charmingly quirky (depending on your taste or feelings for the record), this one is consistent, coherent, and compelling. Mature Macca’s masterpiece.
Memory Almost Full (2007)
HOPE: Memory Almost Full (2007), 5/10: When you listen to a new Macca album, whether you mean to or not, you are subconsciously comparing it to everything that’s come before. And if you are a crazy Macca-head you are also instantly attempting to put it into context. When I listened to Memory Almost Full for the first time, my matchmaking mind almost instantly honed in on its closest sonic relative, the less than stellar Press To Play. Go on and play them back to back. It’s all of a sudden gotten very 1986 in here right ? And while Memory is never boring, it never genuinely shines. Its best moments by far are where Paul gets weird. Both “House of Wax”, an eccentric, epic, slow moving cousin to Speed of Sound’s “Beware My Love” and “222”, a spiralling hypnotic sketch of song replete with tempo changes and the always welcome Macca falsetto, are fascinating and super fine slabs of oddball Paul.
MATTHEW: Memory Almost Full (2007), 7/10: I thought Chaos was just as good as Rain, but I was aware by the time Memory came out that the first was generally considered to be rubbish and the second great. So this third album of the decade was going to be rubbish, right? Not so much. Far from rubbish, it is a dozen strong songs, lots of melodic hooks, no unfinished fragments or self-indulgences of the kind that marred some other Macca albums. It’s in my McTop Ten. That said, it is a step away from the confessional intimacy of Rain and Chaos, and a step towards the so-so modern pop of Paul’s 2010s albums. It is best when it sounds more like a sibling to Chaos—for example, in “You Tell Me,” “Vintage Clothes,” “That Was Me,” “Feet in the Clouds,” “The End of the End.” I didn’t realize until a few years ago that all those songs were written and demo-recorded BEFORE Chaos was made. It shows. Perhaps if those demos are included in the Archive Collection reissue, whenever that comes, they’ll underscore how much this album might have been a Chaos twin. That said, I’d not want the final five tracks (which Paul has called a medley) to be any different (I’m generously pretending the album ends with “End,” not the 2-minute back-alley dentist visit that is “Nod Your Head”).
New (2013)
HOPE: New (2013), 6/10: New is an unpredictable and blessedly weird creature with moments that bring to mind everyone from Queen to The Killers to MGMT. It’s a dirty window of an album with a fair amount of “riffing” and “shredding” and ultimately more about sounds than songs. The Macca voice goes down an octave, the amps get turned up and things get wonderfully eccentric. You couldn’t call it outright Indie Paul, but there is something distinctly off-kilter in the construction of songs like the pounding “Road”, fuzzy singalong “Queenie Eye” and electro-peculiar “Appreciate”. You don’t necessarily see what’s coming, the hooks aren’t obvious and the instrumentation isn’t rote ( it should be noted that two of the aforementioned songs are co-writes with esteemed producer Paul Epworth). The song that best personifies New’s accessible weirdness for me is “Looking At Her” with its incongruous, where the hell did that come from synth-line. It’s the aural equivalent of giant neon brick being thrown through your living room window and is just yes, yes, yes.
MATTHEW: New (2013), 6/10: The modern pop tendencies of Memory Almost Full are almost fully realized on New (and are fully so on its sequel). The tortured Paul of the previous decade was gone, and while I’m happy for him, it meant the return of playful Paul—and songs that were more fun to create than they are to hear. If that makes it a hard album to love, one to pull songs for mixes more than to enjoy from start to finish, it also makes it endlessly interesting. Hope puts it perfectly: its the sounds, rather than the songs, that surprise and bewitch. “Alligator” and “Appreciate” are just the right balance of weird and melodic. The hidden 13th track, which sounds right out of the Rain/Chaos era, always arrives as an odd but welcome twist (and much better hidden after “Road” on the original release, instead of after the dispensable extra tracks on the so-called Deluxe Edition).
Egypt Station (2018)
MATTHEW: Egypt Station (2018), 4/10: I heard a couple of damning reviews of this, Macca’s 22nd studio album of originals, when it first came out. I tried to ignore them but I was put off by “Come on To Me” and “Fuh You,” which seemed just plain bizarre coming from a 76-year-old; the latter sounds like Coldplay production with Enrique Iglesias lyrics, but sung by an old geezer who refuses to do a clean version. I concluded that the slow downward trajectory from Chaos to Memory to New had continued with Egypt. Two years later, I still think there has been diminishing returns since Chaos. But my reaction to the two singles mentioned above smacks of ageism. Surely he’s earned the right to sing “I just wanna fuh you” to anyone who wants to hear it, regardless of how old he is! Besides, there’s one GREAT song on here (“I Don’t Know” is an instant Macca classic), and there are some pretty good ones scattered throughout the full Egypt sessions, enough to fill two sides of vinyl. The fact that one has to wade through an hour and a half of music (the original album’s hour, plus the bonus tracks and follow-up singles) to find one’s fine forty minutes is, well, all part of the pleasure and privilege of having access to so much Paul pop. He’s been doing it for six decades, and shows no sign of stopping. Let’s hope he never does.
HOPE: Egypt Station (2018), 3/10: I concur with Matthew heartily on multiple points; “I Don’t Know” is a freakin’ great song, vintage melodic Macca. And yes, the album is too damn long ( thanks streaming, you bastard). As far as the ageism, well, guilty here too…but then again is there such a thing as age appropriate music, should there be ? Rock stars are forever young right ? “Fuh You” does have a bit of a Grandpa posting stuff on TikTok vibe but it feels much truer to who Paul is at his core than something like Kisses On The Bottom ( his standards album which we discuss in the side projects section below). Still if Egypt Station makes one thing abundantly clear, it is that Indie Paul as heard on its predecessor New is infinitely more listenable than Modern Day Pop Paul as heard on a number of tracks here. There’s a fair amount of filler but the quirky, weirdness of electro-chant ”Back in Brazil” is pretty winning. And the bizarro “Caesar Rock”, a marriage of the sludgy and yes “Soily” sound of early ‘70s Wings and Talking Heads is a head-spinning and ridiculously fun melange.
McCartney III (2020)
MATTHEW: McCartney III (2020), 5/10: We had already written on all 22 studio albums above, when Paul announced that during “rockdown” he’d hammered out another totally-solo album—entirely written, performed, and produced by him, in the vein of 1970’s I and 1980’s II. As you can imagine, and no doubt like you and many thousands of others, we were excited, intrigued, apprehensive. So how did it turn out? Well, exciting and intriguing. There are some genuine new gems here; I really like the “Winter Bird” tracks that open and close the album, and I love the two deeps—“Deep Deep Feeling” and “Deep Down” (the sequencing on the vinyl version has them both on Side B, making that a fine 24 minutes of mature Macca, perhaps enough to push this from a 5 to a 6/10 as it grows on me). But III is not without the quirky flaws that divide opinions on I and II (“Lavatory Lil” is music hall juvenilia of the kind that has amused Paul since Beatle days, but to my tastes is—and here am I hypocritically sinking to the same level with a predictable metaphor—a turd to be flushed). In other words, it’s a typical Macca album, both brilliant and infuriating, an imperfect but very welcome reminder of how lucky we are to still have among us the extraordinary talent of King Paul (yes, after half a century of memorable solo albums, I think he deserves a promotion).
HOPE: McCartney III (2020), 5/10: We are totally in sync on this one Matthew ! The two deeps, “Deep Deep Feeling” and “Deep Down”, the former with it’s gorgeous darkly melodic piano line reminiscent of those on Back the the Egg ( as well as Chaos classic “Riding To Vanity Fair”) and the latter with its dirty Ram style groove, are unquestionably the finest tracks on III. And my runners-up are the birds that bookend the album (“Long Tailed Winter Bird”, “Winter Bird/When Winter Comes”) both of which are sonically splattered with vintage McCartney 1 and Ram mud. Still, the good stuff is countered by a lot of just okay stuff and one dyed-in-the-wool nightmare (“Lavatory Lil”) so III is not the latter day classic some might have hoped for ( including me). Not sure why, but I was expecting III to be more akin to McCartney II, full of electronic noodling and spacey intervals, in fact I was feeling pretty open to that idea so it was kind of surprising to hear him reverting to more traditional patterns. But that’s Paul. Predictably unpredictable. Able to raise a smile or induce a tear at will. Still the uncontested forever master of melody. And of course still pumped to make music (and play drums!). It’s a beautiful thing.
Compilations, Live Albums and Side Projects (1970-2020) !
MATTHEW: Now to the hits and “best of” compilations, of which there are surprisingly only four (considering how many artists with a far smaller catalogue have squeezed far more compilations—or, more often, their labels have): Wings Greatest (1978), All the Best! (1987), Wingspan (2001), and Pure McCartney (2016). I think Paul is to be commended for not flooding and confusing the marketplace with compilations. He seems to give them thought and attention, and perhaps is mindful of the many live albums he released between 1990 and 2019.
Wings Greatest (8/10) was odd for not including all of Macca’s hits to date, but that would have required a double LP, whose cost and pricing Capitol weren’t willing to risk. Still, 5 of its 12 tracks had never appeared on a McCartney album, and it comprised 11 great hits and “Mull of Kintyre” (sorry, but I was living in England when it was #1 for 9 weeks, became the biggest selling single to date, and was inescapable; I’m still recovering). My cassette copy was fairly well flogged in the day.
By the time All The Best! (6/10) was assembled, there was no avoiding putting out a double album of 20 tracks (or 17 on CD, and a different 17 on the US vinyl and CD version). All three versions put me off a little by including the duets with Wonder and Jackson, edited versions of some songs, and (outside the US) the Rupert and the Frog soundtrack song. I made my own mix and almost never played the original compilation
By comparison, this century’s two compilations are superb. Wingspan (9/10) covers roughly the same period as All The Best! but does it so much better, its 40 tracks (yup, it has the advantage of 2 CDs) chosen, divided in two, and sequenced perfectly. I really flogged it. Finally, Pure (10/10) drew on Macca’s entire career since 1970, and by sequencing tracks non-chronologically it created some interesting juxtapositions. The 2-CD version is good but the 4-CD 67-track version is better, throwing old hits up against recent gems and surprising album cuts (like “Winedark Open Sea”). I made my own version of 100 tracks, but I actually play the Pure CDs more.
HOPE: Wings Greatest (9/10) I got this album for Xmas in 1978 and admittedly have a huge sentimental attachment to it. As far as engaging my child brain it worked effectively on many levels. It came with a poster (!). It meant I finally had the perfectly ponderous “Junior’s Farm” on vinyl (!!). I liked the whole thing meaning I could happily play both sides without skipping tracks (!!!). And the one song I most wanted to skip happened to be the last one, “Mull of Kintyre” which made things exceptionally convenient (tilt!). “Mull of Kintyre” fun fact ; when the single was first released in the U.S. it came in a plain sleeve. Imagine my dismay when only a few weeks later I saw it at Korvettes department store with a damned picture sleeve featuring a heretofore unseen photo of Paul, Linda and Denny. There was no way I was going to buy the same record again but I totally wanted the sleeve. After considerable shifting and shuffling, with 2 older sales ladies only feet away, I managed to “pour” out the 45 into the bin and pilfer the sleeve. I literally heard one say to the other as I casually toddled off, “did she take something?”. I did and let me offer my sincerest apologies to both of you ladies wherever you are. If it’s any consolation I still have and treasure it.
All the Best! (5/10) My rating on this is retroactive because I admittedly didn’t buy it upon release ( bad fan). By that point I was obsessed with making mixtapes and so the only thing I really coveted off of it was the new song it included “Once Upon a Long Ago” (which irritatingly was not included on the American version of the album and so I ended up having to fork out for an import version of the single). “Once Upon…” featured the classic “Paul in the ‘80s” combo of cringey lyrics married to a lustrous, unspeakably gorgeous melody. Since the latter is more important, I totally love and forgive it. As a result I only ended up getting the (U.S. version) album a few years after it came out and solely for the sake of completion. Looking back at its contents now, All the Best! was clearly constructed for the masses with its glut of single edits and is thus more straight-up product than artistic statement. At this point it’s simply an artifact of another time.
Wingspan (9/10) is an infinitely better overview and curated with far more care though I admit I was far more excited about the brand new collectibles attached to it, namely the documentary and book of the same name ( truly engaging documents both). I was working at Virgin Megastore in Times Square at the time of its release and was able to blast it over our giant sound system for a nice patch of time. Hearing “Back Seat of My Car” echoing through that cavernous space with hundreds of people milling around was as transcendently and ridiculously beautiful as it sounds. Pure (8/10) is essentially a readymade, officially sanctioned playlist. Despite the presence of a few unwelcome interlopers ( “Bip Bop”, “We All Stand Together”) it’s pretty thoughtfully laid out and the cover featuring bearded ‘70s Macca is hot. Is it necessary or essential ? No, but it’s immeasurably better having Paul make the playlist than some ignorant, emotionless algorithm.
HOPE: It was inevitable that Paul’s relentless touring would spawn some live recordings but we had no way of knowing just how many (aka too many). Apart from the precious, emotionally charged document that is Amoeba Gig (the 2007 secret show at the brilliant, legendary LA record shop) the rest of Paul’s latter day live catalog is pretty superfluous. Tripping the Live Fantastic ’90, Unplugged ’91, Paul is Live ‘93, Back in the U.S. ‘02, Back in the World ‘03 and Good Evening New York City ‘09 are cool souvenirs if you were at any of the shows, but none are truly essential or a patch on the revved-up oldie, 1976’s Wings Over America.
MATTHEW: I agree that the eight (!) live albums of 1990-2009 (that’s counting separately the two 1990 versions of Tripping the Live Fantastic) are enjoyable extras, with only the Amoeba Gig being essential listening. Tellingly, the only one I listen to regularly is GENYC, because it evokes the live shows I saw a few years before and after then. I also like how it connects the solo work to his Beatles songs (as the other live albums do, but none of the compilations do). And of course the live albums tap into the energy that mature Macca has sustained to a stunning degree.
MATTHEW: We’ve mentioned some of the classical and electronic pop projects in passing, but let’s round up everything not yet rated and summarized. After all, in addition to the 22 studio albums, 4 compilations, and 9 live albums covered above, there are 5 studio side-projects, as well as 7 classical and 5 electronica albums (according to the tally on Wikipedia)—for a grand total of 52 (in 50 years)!
The side-project albums, as I just called them, are the forgettably dodgy Thrillington (1976) instrumental album; Give My Regards to Broadstreet (1984), the ill-conceived soundtrack album that we justifiably dismissed earlier; and two albums of old rock ‘n’ roll covers. CHOBA B CCCP (1988) and Run Devil Run (1999) are interesting curiosities, no doubt adored by some fans, but not albums I ever choose over his original studio albums. As for the electronica albums, they are more varied than that genre tag suggests: experimental projects like Twin Freaks are one-listen-only curiosities; but the trio of albums made by Paul with Youth, as The Fireman, are worth exploring. I miss Paul’s quirky charm on these three albums, but it’s absence makes them more consistent. The best of the trio is Electric Arguments (2008), and it’s the closest to a Paul solo album. The most recent side project is Kisses on the Bottom (see below). My enjoyment of Pie also prompted me to buy Standing Stone, which came out the same year. It remains my favorite of Macca’s classical albums. The others are interesting and pleasant, but Stone is more original, complex, and rewarding (I particularly love the second movement with “Sea Voyage” at its heart).
HOPE: Ah yes, the dreaded “side projects”, the scourge of every completist on a budget. 1976’s Thrillington album featured instrumental, ballroom flavored versions of songs from the wondrous Ram. Unfortunately, despite its stellar source material, it sucks. Ram is a dirty, glorious mudball of an album and Thrillington conveys none of its charm. The terrible soundtrack Give My Regards to Broadstreet (1984) did possess a singular piece of precious cargo in the form of handsome mega-ballad “No More Lonely Nights” but its inclusion on the All The Best! comp a few years later stripped it of that lone virtue forever. The 2 rock oldies cover albums CHOBA B CCCP (1988) and Run Devil Run (1991) were clearly passion projects for Paul and while he sings with genuine fire on both I don’t ever feel the desire to listen to them. As a melody addict, the meat and potatoes rock of the ‘50s and early ‘60s isn’t quite tuneful enough for me. Yes, this is what happens when children are raised solely on ‘70s AM and ’80s FM radio, you get a whole generation of kids with a ridiculously large sweet tooth and no appreciation of musical history (or, okay, maybe it’s just me).
I agree with Matthew’s assessment on the electronica excursions and that Electric Arguments (2008) feels the most like an actual Macca album. He included the album’s rousing single “Sing The Changes” as part of his setlist on the ’09 tour and I can confirm it sounded shockingly good in the stadium environment, filling the impersonal space with something akin to actual joy.
The gaggle of classical albums Paul’s kicked out over the years within the decade are home to a handful of genuinely transcendent moments. Working Classical (1999) features some seriously moving orchestral versions of old classics (“Junk”, “My Love”) as well as several sweet originals (“Spiral” is lovely). But the best of the classical excursions is unquestionably Standing Stone (1997) most especially the aforementioned epic, cinematic and okay, slightly militaristic “Sea Voyage”. It remains my absolute favorite Paul-strumental, even over “Singalong Junk” or “Hot As Sun” and continues to occupy a galleon-size space in my heart.
HOPE: Kisses On The Bottom (2012), 2/10: Back in 2007, Daryl Hall gave a revealing interview to Pitchfork and said this about Rod Stewart’s string of successful standards albums; “You can be Rod Stewart, and be Clive Davis’s dog, and have a career at the expense of your artistic soul. I have nothing but negative things to say about that, because I respect him as a singer, and I hate what he does. He sold his soul. And I take that personally.” A very cutting observation there but also painfully true. And having watched the Rod do a show at MSG during that era where he donned a dinner jacket for the first hour, then reverted back to sleazy rock star for the latter half, it was clear where his heart was i.e. not in the jacket. This will sound nuts, but I didn’t want Kisses On The Bottom to be successful because I hated the idea of Paul falling into a Rod style quagmire. Of course as a songwriter who loves/lives to jam, it wasn’t likely but hey, I don’t think Rod ever saw himself heading down that path either. The album is an inessential curiosity.
MATTHEW: Kisses On The Bottom (2012), 3/10: I too feared this was the start of a whole new “standards” post-career, with multiple volumes to drive multiple nails into the coffin of Sir Paul’s credibility (a la Sir Rod). It’s certainly pointless (and even has a pointless, less-good remake of “Baby’s Request” from disrespected Egg). It’s best song, “If I Take You Home Tonight” isn’t even on here (it went to Diana Krall, who made it a stand-out track on her brilliant Wallflower album). But it isn’t terrible, it has one good new song (“My Valentine”), and I’d rather listen to it all the way through than his worst 80s-90s albums (mmm, maybe). (It’s a good way to mollify people asking for Christmas music, without having to suffer actual Christmas music; how’s that for damning with faint praise?!)
In Conclusion…
HOPE: I know. You are exhausted from reading this 4- part epic. We are too. If you are not already hammered from having a drink every time we uttered the words “Archive Collection” then please, relax and have a drink. You freakin’ deserve it for making it this far. And Thank You for indulging us, seriously, THANK YOU.
Right, because I can’t let sleeping dogs lie, I wanted to close this insanity with our personal Top 5’s for both songs and albums…but Matthew told me it would be impossible to narrow our picks down to only 5 songs. And he was right. 5 isn’t gonna do it. And so with that in mind, we now humbly offer our Top 10 songs in alphabetical order ( and our Top 5 albums in the order of all our aforementioned grades).
MATTHEW: Hope, you asked me for my Top 5 Macca songs. Too hard! I can get it down to ten (with the proviso that such a list changes from week to week—as you and any fan will understand—and this week it happens to heavy on ‘70s singles). Here’s that Top 10 in alphabetical order:
MATTHEW’s Top 10 songs
1.Arrow Through Me
2.Back Seat of My Car
3.Band On The Run
4.Beautiful Night
5.Goodnight Tonight
6.Live and Let Die
7.Maybe I’m Amazed
8.Riding To Vanity Fair
9.Silly Love Songs
10.With A Little Luck
MATTHEW: As for my Top 5 albums, many Macca fans would agree with the first and last of those five, but far fewer would understand my other picks! Yours are a similar mix, aren’t they, Hope? My Top 10 is rounded out with albums stretching from 1970 to 2007, reflecting the staggering fact that Macca has not only been churning out songs for sixty years, but most are good and many are great.
MATTHEW’S Top 5 Albums
1.Band on the Run
2.London Town
3.Back To The Egg
4.Driving Rain
5.Chaos And Creation In The Backyard
HOPE: While my favorite songs are generally determined by whatever headspace I am in at a given time, I will say that my picks stay relatively steady for the most part. And while I’ve listened to the ones I’m about list hundreds upon hundreds of times at this point in my life they never stop feeling like home. In alphabetical order they are…
HOPE’S Top 10 songs
1.Arrow Through Me
2.Back Seat Of My Car
3.Don’t Let It Bring You Down
4.Jet
5.Listen To What The Man Said
6.Little Lamb Dragonfly
7.Once Upon A Long Ago
8.Riding To Vanity Fair
9.Some People Never Know
10.Take It Away
HOPE’S Top 5 Albums
1.Ram
2.Back To The Egg
3.Tug of War
4.Band on the Run
5.Driving Rain
MATTHEW: We’ve tried to be critical and discerning, as well as fawning and fanatical in our reviews of his albums. That is partly to make our comments less predictable, partly because our opinions have been formed by personal experiences, and partly because the full Macca catalog is deep and wide, varied and complex, packed with experiments and surprises—some less welcome than others. Too often, the missteps have been used to dismiss the Macca legacy, when the real cause of that attitude is a lazy and unjust perpetuation of the old blame-game: blaming Paul for the Beatle breakup, for being happily married and relishing ordinary life when John offered angst and drama, for surviving when John was martyred, for making everyone else seem inadequate by being tirelessly productive. Sure, across the hundreds of songs, there are highs and lows, but the highs are scattered across the decades. This is not a tale of brief brilliance followed by slow decline. There are gems everywhere, and at any minute another one could surface. It’s extraordinary. When you add in the songs he wrote with The Beatles, the sheer magnitude of his impact on popular culture over the past six decades—his contributions to the daily lives of many millions of us—it is staggering. As Ian Leslie recently posted on The Ruffian, there are only three emotions that Sir Paul and his music most justifiably evoke: “awe, gratitude, and love.” How lucky we are to live in the Age of Macca!
HOPE: I concur with EVERYTHING Matthew just said! Digging deep and dissecting the Macca solo discography has been an absolute joy for us. Despite having heard most of the aforementioned albums ten trillion times, we still somehow rediscovered songs we’d previously ignored as well as came to appreciate the ones we already loved even more. We hope that this crazy thing has maybe, just maybe inspired you to dig, revisit or just plain explore the vast and wondrous Macca solo catalogue.
Gonna give the last word to the tiny machine below, the first iPod I ever owned (2001-2009 r.i.p.). Take it away dear friend…
PICKING UP ROCKS 
Just finished the series. Well, reading it that is – still making my way through the albums. Never spent much time with Macca’s catalog besides the obvious. Great stuff! Congrats to you both on a Herculean effort. Now do Ringo…
LikeLike
This site just keeps giving! A truly wonderful, informative, ….and fun series/reviews of Macca music. A huge well done and thanks to you both for your efforts in pulling this together, it’s been a great read across the 4 x items. And I mostly agree with both of your top 5’s/top 10’s! Coincidentally, and ever so slightly off topic as it’s Beatles rather than Paul solo – but worth a listen – https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2021/08/16/elis-regina-golden-slumbers-1971/ – a Brazillian singer called Elis Regina covering Golden Slumbers. Very 70’s in production (and that’s not a bad thing) but sounds fantastic on headphones. I’ve only just discovered this version, and it may be an acquired taste, but I love it. Thanks again.
LikeLike
Spectacular series. Read the whole thing while listening to McCartney II which I have done in awhile. It is utter rubbish. Blue Sway sounds like background music of a late night Cinemax love scene. Only Wild Life is worse. I found myself nodding my head in agreement with you both a lot of the time and then other times vigorously shaking my head in disagreement 75% in favor. I have not listened to anything from the last decade because his voice is gone.
Arrow Through Me is a special song, but I can’t get into London Town at all. Beware My Love is far and away his most overlooked song.
In the first post, Your theory about Paul wanting to make the music, my theory is that he was trying all he could not to sound like the Beatles
LikeLike
Thanks so much, so glad you liked it ! And hey, it’s always cool to disagree 😉 I’m with you on Wild Life and Macca II,and still get irritated at how the latter is constantly characterized as a prescient “classic”. And absolutely agree on “Beware My Love”, stunning and supremely underrated.
LikeLike