"I had to go deeper and, as I began to power through the albums, I started to wonder – did Paul McCartney peak after the Beatles?"
More than five decades on, Paul McCartney's solo career and work outside of The Beatles remains revered and rediscovered. A blur of invention and reinvention, a staggering display of versatility traversing polished pop, hard rock, orchestral pieces and even avant-garde detours.
Alongside and beyond his seven studio albums with Wings, McCartney’s solo output has truly been expansive, releasing around 18 solo studio albums spanning McCartney (1970), to his most recent release McCartney III (2021). Forthcoming album The Boys Of Dungeon Lane marks his first new material in over five years and his 19th solo record, a new chapter in an already sprawling, decades-long period of rock and pop innovation. Where The Beatles represent a tight and impressive snapshot of Paul McCartney's brilliance, it's the Liverpool musician's solo works which astonish in range and longevity, a catalogue which invites reevaluation and rewards anyone embarking on the journey.
Uncover Paul McCartney's post-Beatles era in full glory with Man On The Run, a new documentary of old material memorialising the legendary musician's second coming.
Across solo records, collaborations with wife Linda and the ever-shifting identity of Wings, Rough Trade Used Vinyl Assistant Huw Thomas dives deep into McCartney mania, with a refined ranking of the legendary British artist's top ten greatest works outside of The Beatles.
"My introduction to Paul McCartney’s solo career came before I knew anything by the Beatles. It was one of the most beautiful songs he has ever written, We All Stand Together, from the animated film Rupert and the Frog Song. I saw it as a kid, and it really stuck with me. Seriously – go back and listen to that one! When I was a little older, an uncle bought me All the Best!, a 1987 greatest hits that doesn’t even begin to include all of his successes solo and with Wings. I had to go deeper and, as I began to power through the albums, I started to wonder – did Paul McCartney peak after the Beatles? The sheer volume of great work he made in the 1970s (solo, with his wife Linda, with Wings) is stupefying. His solo career in general is dizzying; we are over 55 years in, and attitudes are still constantly changing about his albums. This top ten is where I stand right now. Rock it, man!"
10. Wings - Red Rose Speedway (1973)
I keep coming back to this one. The brilliant, daft opener Big Barn Bed always makes me want to listen to the whole thing! Red Rose Speedway, the second Wings album, is a much more confident work than its homespun predecessor Wild Life, with McCartney operating at top whimsical profundity (Single Pigeon), caring for animals (Little Lamb Dragonfly), writing an enduring love song (My Love) and - one of my favourite tricks of his - smashing four pleasant-enough songs together for a medley at the end. Quintessential stuff.
Key track: Single Pigeon
9. Paul McCartney - Press to Play (1986)
McCartney’s sixth solo album is the black sheep in the family. Produced by Hugh Padgham (The Police, Phil Collins), Press to Play was intended to rally Macca’s stock after the disappointing Give My Regards to Broad Street project, but flopped with the public and critics alike. It has been largely dismissed as a gaudy trinket from the overproduced 80s for the last forty years, but it deserves better. Press to Play is really a blast of unadulterated, arty Macca, a sophisti-pop successor to McCartney II that boldly throws the Beatles out with the bathwater. Experiments like Talk More Talk and Pretty Little Head have worn very well, while sunny lead single Press is one of McCartney’s finest pop moments. At its best, it gestures towards hyperreal studio confections like Scritti Politti’s Cypid & Psyche 85. Perhaps the most undervalued album in the Macca catalogue, not least by the man himself.
Key track: Pretty Little Head
8. Wings - London Town (1978)
The softest Wings album. London Town is literal yacht rock – it was largely recorded aboard a boat moored in the Virgin Islands – but it's not all smooth sailing; sharing space with winsome fare like With a Little Luck and I’m Carrying are some of McCartney’s most overlooked experiments like the synth jam Cuff Link, the sea shanty-like Famous Groupies and the sea shanty *and* disco epic Morse Moose and the Grey Goose. Four songwriting collaborations between McCartney and Denny Laine are the album’s folksy backbone; the best of these, Deliver Your Children and Don’t Let It Bring You Down, prove that Wings wasn’t just the Paul McCartney show.
Key track: Don’t Let It Bring You Down
7. Paul McCartney - Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005)
Paul McCartney has been a - whisper it - legacy act for a long time. It arguably started in 1989, the year he blew the cobwebs off his Hofner bass and embarked on his first solo tour in promotion of Flowers in the Dirt. Most McCartney projects since have found him playing an end-of-history version of himself; a sweet, Yoda-like figure who wears a Nehru jacket and keeps positive. It's this McCartney you’ll find on legacy sequel records like Flaming Pie (1997), a wattled Beatle-fest with Ringo guesting, and McCartney III (2020), his Godfather Part III, created in lockdown (or “rockdown”). In such company, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard stands out for its stillness. Produced by Radiohead maven Nigel Godrich, it’s a rainy post-Britpop outing with few sunny spots. McCartney sounds bruised and betrayed on slow burners like At the Mercy and Riding to Vanity Fair and even the more peppy material here gets the austere Godrich treatment. Jenny Wren, sometimes considered a sequel to the Beatles’ Blackbird, and the almost parodic English Tea stand out on an excellent album.
Key track: Jenny Wren
6. Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full (2007)
McCartney’s follow-up to Chaos is often derided as its poor relation. I beg to differ; Memory Almost Full is a better, more rounded album with Macca’s gifts on full beam. This is my kind of legacy record; it’s concerned with the past but in a way that feels wholly natural. Its twelve tracks zip between stories of childhood abandonment (Wings-y corker Only Mama Knows), rock star recollections (That Was Me) and McCartney’s real-life wardrobe (Vintage Clothes) with consistency and a welcome dollop of eccentricity. Most fans prefer Chaos and Creation in the Backyard but this album would’ve fit that title much better.
Key track: Mr. Bellamy
5. Paul McCartney - Tug of War (1982)
The death of John Lennon hangs over Tug of War, produced by George Martin. The portrait on its cover almost appears to show McCartney cowering, headphones bolted on, and the title track has him losing faith in a violent world (“In years to come they may discover what the air we breathe and the life we lead are all about / But it won't be soon enough for me”). The mood is lightened by guests Stevie Wonder and Carl Perkins and some topsy-turvy Macca gold like Take It Away and The Pound is Sinking, but it’s the poignant moments that linger. Somebody Who Cares is one of the most gorgeous things he’s ever written and Here Today, a direct Lennon tribute, hits where it hurts (“I am holding back the tears no more / I love you”).
Key track: Somebody Who Cares
"Every song feels essential, from hits like Jet to deep cuts like Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me), famously born when McCartney dined with Dustin Hoffman, and Hoffman challenged him to write a song on the spot about Pablo Picasso. Of course, he could."
4. Wings - Band on the Run (1973)
The story of Band on the Run has hardened into rock myth as an epic of talent triumphing over adversity. You’ve heard it; Wings travelled to Nigeria to make the record, lost two members before they’d even boarded the plane and then lost their demo tapes in a robbery. Undaunted, they cut most of the album in a botanical haze in EMI’s slipshod Lagos studio. Despite how often that story has been told, it is genuinely astonishing how they pulled it out of the bag; this album is a masterclass not only in songwriting and arranging but in sequencing (one of the best Side As ever!) Every song feels essential, from hits like Jet to deep cuts like Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me), famously born when McCartney dined with Dustin Hoffman, and Hoffman challenged him to write a song on the spot about Pablo Picasso. Of course, he could.
Key track: Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five
3. Wings - Back to the Egg (1979)
Ambitious, eclectic, mysterious, haunted; the final Wings album is their White Album. Cut by a five-person lineup of the band, Back to the Egg offers a, err, scrambled track list encompassing slinky R&B (the classic Arrow Through Me), bug-eyed punk (Spin It On), power pop (Getting Closer) and vocal jazz (Baby’s Request). The lineup even expands to a supergroup featuring Pete Townshend, David Gilmour and half of Led Zeppelin for two beefy tracks, Rockestra Theme and So Glad to See You Here. Mixed in with all these curveballs are some of McCartney’s most captivating vocal performances - Million Miles, recorded on the balcony of a castle, is starkly beautiful – and silliest lyrics (“Say you don’t love him, my salamander” begins Getting Closer, the most typically Wings thing on here). It isn’t the most focused of records but that is its strength. It’s like a Swiss Army knife and I find it more rewarding over time than any other record McCartney made with Wings. It could only have been improved if it had included the outrageously groovy Goodnight Tonight, a single the band cut during its sessions. That bassline!
Key track: Arrow Through Me
2. Paul McCartney - McCartney II (1980)
Shortly after Back to the Egg was released, Paul McCartney returned to his farm in Scotland with 16-track tape machine and, over a month, recorded some twenty left-field tracks, playing all of the instruments himself. Making extensive use of synthesisers, dub techniques and ambient textures, McCartney created some of his most thrilling music in an environment of pure creativity; saturnine ballads (Waterfalls, One of These Days), proto trip-hop (Darkroom), cold rock and roll pastiche (Bogey Music) and, eventually, something like a fully-formed pop song, Coming Up. McCartney II compiles eleven of these experiments, leaving out some classics like the ten-minute electronic Latin disco track Secret Friend, Check My Machine and something called Wonderful Christmastime. McCartney II was dismissed as slight upon release, but it has become a cult classic, namechecked by everyone from Throbbing Gristle to Hot Chip at this point. In 2015, McCartney acknowledged its resurgence by including the batshit Temporary Secretary in his live shows for a little while. Frankly, he should always play it.
Key track: Temporary Secretary
"If I could recommend one record to show off all of McCartney’s gifts, it’s this one. Easily up there with any Beatles album."
1. Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney - RAM (1971)
RAM is a masterpiece, plain and simple! As you might have gathered over this ranking, I like McCartney best when he feels free to be as experimental, eclectic and silly as he wants. In other words, when he’s too bogged down by his own legacy in The Beatles. RAM, a team effort from Paul and Linda McCartney, hits a sweet spot in this regard. In some ways, it is Paul’s sequel to Abbey Road - it’s got some of the same grandeur with orchestral motifs, studio gloss and multi-part songs (Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey) – but it has a concurrent homespun charm, best exemplified by Heart of the Country and the ghostly Ram On. There’s also some grit beneath the surface; two of the album’s most infectious songs, Too Many People and Dear Boy, are lyrically digs at John Lennon and Linda’s ex-husband, respectively. If I could recommend one record to show off all of McCartney’s gifts, it’s this one. Easily up there with any Beatles album.
Key track: Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey
Honourable Mentions
All of Paul McCartney’s studio albums are well worth investigating. There are great songs to be found on every single one of them. New (2013), Pipes of Peace (1983) and Venus and Mars (1975) came close to appearing in my top ten. Some of his greatest solo singles like Another Day and – seriously – We All Stand Together do not appear on any studio album and he has no end of great B-sides and bonus tracks like Daytime Nighttime Suffering, I’ll Give You a Ring, Back on My Feet and Frank Sinatra’s Party.
He has been involved in various side projects that are little known outside of diehard circles. His three albums with Youth under the name The Fireman are gems. The sound collage/mashup albums Liverpool Sound Collage (2000) and Twin Freaks (2005) are a lot of fun, too.
In terms of live albums, Wings over America (1976) is the most essential, with versions of songs like Maybe I’m Amazed and Beware My Love that go toe-to-toe with the studio takes. Unplugged (The Official Bootleg), released in 1991, is another strong collection and Amoeba Gig, a recording of a 2007 in-store, released in various iterations, including a 2010 promo CD with a Sunday newspaper, captures one of McCartney’s more intimate shows with a great setlist.
For a detailed roadmap on McCartney’s solo career, I have to recommend Take It Away: The Complete Solo Beatles Podcast, whose initial run saw Chris Mercer and the late Ryan Brady break down each of his projects in forensic detail. It’s a seriously entertaining and informative series.
