Band on the Run is generally considered to be Paul McCartney's strongest solo effort. The album was also his most commercially successful, selling well and spawning two hit singles, the multi-part pop suite of the title track and the roaring rocker "Jet." On these cuts and elsewhere, McCartney's penchant for sophisticated, nuanced arrangements and irrepressibly catchy melodic hooks is up to the caliber he displayed in the Beatles, far surpassing the first two Wings releases, Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway. The focus found in Band on the Run may have to do with the circumstances of its creation: two former members quit the band prior to recording, leaving McCartney, wife Linda, and guitarist Denny Laine to complete the album alone (with Paul writing, producing, and playing most of the instruments himself). The album has the majestic, orchestral sweep of McCartney's Abbey Road-era ambition…
Touted as a personally curated compilation by Paul McCartney, Pure McCartney is the first McCartney compilation since 2001's Wingspan: Hits and History. A full 15 years separated this and Wingspan, longer than the span between that double-disc set and 1987's All the Best, but the 2001 set also stopped cold in 1984, leaving over 30 years of solo McCartney recordings uncompiled on hits collections. In both its standard two-CD and deluxe four-disc incarnations, Pure McCartney attempts to rectify this, going so far as to include "Hope for the Future," his song for the 2014 video game Destiny.
Wild Life, the debut album from Wings was originally released December 1971 and is the eleventh release in the Paul McCartney Archive Collection, personally supervised by Paul McCartney. Written by Paul and Linda McCartney (with the exception of a cover of Mickey & Sylvia's Love Is Strange ), Wild Life is beloved by fans for its raw and direct vibe - having been recorded in just over a week with the majority of tracks laid down in a single take. The 2CD digipack features the original album remastered at Abbey Road Studios on CD1 and bonus audio of singles B-sides, and previously unreleased tracks on CD2.
Sir James Paul McCartney, CH, MBE (born 18 June 1942), is an English singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer. He gained worldwide fame as the bass guitarist and singer for the rock band the Beatles, widely considered the most popular and influential group in the history of pop music. His songwriting partnership with John Lennon was the most successful of the post-war era…
All right, he's made a record with his wife and a record with his pickup band where democracy is allegedly the conceit even if it never sounds that way, so he returns to a solo effort, making the most disjointed album he ever cut. There's a certain fascination to its fragmented nature, not just because it's decidedly on the softer side of things, but because his desire for homegrown eccentricity has been fused with his inclination for bombastic art rock à la Abbey Road…
After recording Band on the Run as a three-piece with wife Linda and guitarist Denny Laine, McCartney added Jimmy McCulloch on lead guitar and Geoff Britton on drums to the Wings line-up in 1974. Having written several new songs for the next album, McCartney decided upon New Orleans, Louisiana as the recording venue, and Wings headed there in January 1975. As soon as the sessions began, the personality clash that had been evident between McCulloch and Britton during Wings' 1974 sessions in Nashville became more pronounced, and Britton - after a mere six month stay - quit Wings, having only played on three of the new songs. A replacement, American Joe English, was quickly auditioned and hired to finish the album…