Paul Mccartney

When Paul McCartney returned to the studio a year after his wife Linda's death, he wanted to cut loose and have a good time. He gathered a bunch of friends, most notably guitarist David Gilmour, with the intention of cutting a collection of rock & roll oldies with minimal rehearsal and a handful of takes. On the surface, that makes Run Devil Run like Choba B CCCP, but there are subtle differences that make Devil a far superior effort. This time around, there's a real freshness to the performances. Gilmour, in particular, amazes, turning in some of his finest playing in years. Similarly, McCartney is invigorated, leaving behind his vocal schtick, laying back and rocking out with a set of fairly unfamiliar oldies.

Red Rose Speedway is the twelfth release in the Paul McCartney Archive Collection, personally supervised by Paul McCartney. Released in April 1973 and featuring the #1 single My Love, Red Rose Speedway was the first Wings album to hit #1 on the U.S. chart. 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.

Off the Ground is the ninth solo studio album by Paul McCartney under his own name, released in 1993. As his first studio album of the 1990s, it is also the follow-up to the well-received Flowers in the Dirt (1989). In the United Kingdom, the album debuted at number 5 and quickly fell off the chart, spending only 6 weeks inside the top 100. In the United States, it peaked at the number 17 on the Billboard 200 with the first-week sales of only 53,000 copies, managing to receive Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. Although it met with mixed reviews from critics and suffered from lackluster sales in the UK and North America, the album fared better in other key markets such as Spain.

Released after the studied, meticulous Flowers in the Dirt, the live acoustic concert album Unplugged was a breath of fresh air, and it remains one of the most enjoyable records in McCartney's catalog. Running through a selection of oldies – not only his own, but Beatles and rock & roll chestnuts – McCartney is carefree and charming, making songs like "Be-Bop-a-Lula" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" (which finds Paul melding Bill Monroe with Elvis) sound fresh. But the real revelations of the record are the songs McCartney hauls out from his debut – "That Would Be Something," "Every Night," and "Junk" – which sound lovely and timeless, restoring them to their proper place in his canon. They help make Unplugged into a thoroughly enjoyable minor gem.

Band on the Run is the third studio album by Paul McCartney and Wings, released in December 1973. It marked the fifth album by Paul McCartney since his departure from the Beatles in April 1970. Although sales were modest initially, its commercial performance was aided by two hit singles - "Jet" and "Band on the Run" - such that it became the top-selling studio album of 1974 in the United Kingdom and Australia, in addition to revitalising McCartney's critical standing. It remains McCartney's most successful album and the most celebrated of his post-Beatles works. In 2000, Q magazine placed it at number 75 in its list of the "100 Greatest British Albums Ever". In 2012, Band on the Run was voted 418th on Rolling Stone's revised list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".

Technically, All the Best was the first compilation of McCartney's solo material, since Wings Greatest covered songs released under the Wings aegis. Well, there is considerable overlap between the two records – no less than ten of that album's 12 songs are here, yet only the hard-rocking "Hi Hi Hi" is truly missed – although the seven new songs do give this album a different character, for better or worse…

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…