Paul McCartney’s 5 Greatest Albums Outside of the Beatles

 

Sorry I didn't get a chance to make a post last night, I know you are all traumatized. So in order to rectify the situation a bit, I am adding two additions to McCartney's top five albums and again these albums may not contain his biggest hits, but they are the most solid albums from beginning to finish. Today I am listing number 2 and 3. Numbers 4 and 5 have already been posted with number 5 being 'Venus and Mars' and number four being 'Tug of War.'

 

3) Back To The Egg

 

Okay, I know that some people might be scratching their heads here for this album did not sell very well and you will never find any song on it on any greatest hits package. However, this album that was released in 1979 kicks ass and there is not a bad song on it, unless you have the special edition version that has ‘Rudolph the Red Nose Reggae,’ then there might be some room to disagree with that statement. The album cleverly begins with a little opener called ‘Reception’ which is a cool little instrumental with some sound bites that sound like somebody is flipping through radio stations. There are a couple of really good rockers on this album which includes ‘Again and Again and Again’ and ‘So Glad to See You Here’ which was his heaviest solo song to date and second only in degrees of heaviness to ‘Helter Skelter.’ This was also the album that he assembled a supergroup of famous musicians and recorded the ‘Rockestra Theme’ in which he won a Grammy for. He also revisited his two song combination practice twice on this album; most notably was ‘Love Awake/Winter Rose.’ Aside from these truly well written and performed songs, the rest of the album is completely solid and is beyond worth checking out for the serious McCartney fan.

 

2) Flaming Pie

 

For somebody that grew up with McCartney’s music and has such incredibly fond memories of life as a child with the sounds of the Beatles and Wings on the radio, it was not an easy choice putting one of his newer albums so high on this list. However, this was truly a great album for him and is beyond worthy of being rated so high. This album was released twenty years ago this year in 1997 and less than a year before his beloved wife Linda passed away from cancer. The name of the album itself came from a John Lennon quote when somebody once asked him where they got their band’s name from and he replied that it came in a vision where a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them, 'from this day on you are Beatles with an A,’ so if you think the name sounds silly then you actually have to take that up with Mr. Lennon.

 

Anyway, Paul did super good with this album which has several tracks that were very reminiscent of some of his older work. One of which is the title track that I can rarely listen to only once. Whenever it comes on, I usually have to hit replay at least once. ‘Little Willow’ is one of his most beautiful songs ever and it was written as a tribute for Ringo’s first wife Maureen, who was fighting a losing battle with cancer herself at that time. Two other highly noteworthy songs on this album are ‘Calico Skies’ and one of my all-time favorites ‘Beautiful Night,’ in which you can clearly make out Ringo singing backup vocals and playing drums on.

 

Just thought I would add here as a little anecdote that around the time this album came out, Paul did an interview on VH1 in front of a live audience where they could also ask questions and one person in attendance asked Paul if there were any current bands that he really liked and he quickly responded that he was quite fond of Oasis, which was a band that had continuously badmouthed the Beatles in various drunken states to the press. This then got quite the chuckle from the crowd, but they also knew that he was dead serious.