The album garnered minimal commercial success and received generally poor reviews. Founded in 1971 by former BeatlePaul McCartney, his wife Linda McCartney, Denny Laine and Denny Seiwell after the release of the McCartneys' album Ram, the band made their debut with Wild Life, released in December that year. Somehow McCartney manages to take a swipe at his former writing partner through one of his sweeter melodies that perhaps hinted at the vulnerability behind the attack.The discography of the English rock band Paul McCartney and Wings, also known simply as Wings, consisted of seven studio albums, one live album, two compilation albums, 29 singles and 19 music videos. “He’d been doing a lot of preaching, and it got up my nose a little bit,” McCartney said in 1984. “That was your first mistake/You took your lucky break and broke it in two,” he snorts in ‘Too Many People’. So as a retort to Lennon’s continued flouting of his talent, McCartney wrote a song aimed directly at John. It wasn’t something McCartney was prepared to take lying down. Having split from his familial band in The Beatles, Macca was now public enemy number one after bearing most of the blame for their disbandment. One Ram track acts as the perfect distillation of McCartney’s life in 1971. In fact, the best moments of the album come in these reflections. It was an album where he not only provided some fantastical music hall numbers, the kind that inherently beat in the heart of McCartney, but also provide some scathing reflections of the world around him. What’s more, despite the slight conceptualisation, the album largely reads like a confessional moment in Macca’s life. What started as a piece of pure pop innovation would provide a sure footing for a host of other groups to spring from. You can trace everything from Britpop to pure jangle indie back to this record. The record not only saw Paul invite his wife Linda McCartney to play, effectively beginning Wings in the process, but also saw the singer lay down a blueprint that would eventually help build some of the most notable genres around. Despite that cutting statement from Lennon, Paul McCartney’s 1971 classic album Ram has long been regarded as some of the former Beatle’s most inspired work, highlighting that though it may not have been to Lennon’s taste when McCartney let his imagination run wild, there was no telling the heights he could reach. “I thought it was awful! McCartney was better because at least there were some tunes on it, like ‘Junk’,” said John Lennon of Macca’s seminal LP. The first instalment of the trilogy is certainly the best and captures an artist beginning to understand their own expression. It’s a trick Macca has repeated on two more occasions, firstly for McCartney II in 1980 and, of course, the stellar release of 2020 McCartney III. Secretly working on his debut solo album for months before it was released in 1970, McCartney had begun to find his feet and was ready to stand up and be counted. The singer-songwriter had worked for so long alongside John Lennon that now, faced with a future without him, he retreated to the northern tip of Scotland and, most pertinently, within himself. For Paul McCartney, however, things were a bit different. George Harrison rejoiced at the opportunity to be heard and Ringo Starr, too, was excited about the future. When the news of The Beatles’ split finally began to sink in for the four members of the band they all had different reactions, Lennon, the chief conspirator behind the disbandment, went about his life as the most famous man in the world. It’s an album that speaks loudly of two themes of McCartney’s musicianship: a desire to make songs that instantaneously make your hips swing and feet tap, and songs that are drenched in the complexity of the music itself. The album has since been regarded as one of the best rock albums ever made.
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