On Saturday, over 50 years after he supposedly died, the very much still alive Paul McCartney will celebrate his 80th birthday. Few people have cast a shadow over popular music as large as Sir Paul’s, and the Beatles have been even more present in the public consciousness since Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back aired last year. One of the main takeaways from that documentary series was how naturally songwriting seemed to come to McCartney, melodies and lyrics pouring out of him whenever he sat down at a piano. Some people may have stopped paying attention after the Beatles broke up, but McCartney’s prodigious creativity never flagged.
The prevailing narrative for many years was that John Lennon was the Serious Artist of the Beatles’ main songwriting team, and when Lennon wasn’t around to act as a foil, McCartney’s music became disposable fluff. That narrative is, to put it bluntly, bullshit. McCartney’s solo work has undergone a well-deserved critical reevaluation since the ’90s, with once reviled albums like Ram and McCartney II now hailed as hidden gems and ahead-of-their time masterpieces. Today, on the eve of Macca’s 80th birthday, it’s time to recognize his genius with a list of 30 essential tracks from his solo career that showcase his breadth, his melodic brilliance, his sly humor, and the unerring humanity beneath his songs.
For the purposes of this list, McCartney’s solo career includes things like Ram, which is credited to Paul and Linda McCartney, and the releases with his post-Beatles band Wings. Not included, however, is McCartney’s classical work or the Fireman, his experimental project with Youth. Obviously, these kinds of lists are subjective and intensely personal, and many of you will have issues with this one. You might hate some of the songs that were chosen, and you might love some that were left off. That’s okay. Feel free to voice your displeasure in the comments while you click through to check out Macca’s best bangers and ballads alike.
30. “Mull Of Kintyre” (1977)
While “Mull of Kintyre” is a mostly forgotten curio in America, it’s still McCartney’s biggest song in the UK. It was even the best-selling single of all time in the UK for a while, beating out the Beatles’ own 1963 hit “She Loves You,” until Band Aid’s charity song “Do They Know It’s Christmas” unseated it in 1984. A Scottish folk-tinged, bagpipe-laden tribute to the picturesque countryside of western Scotland where McCartney’s beloved High Park Farm is located, “Mull of Kintyre” is a simple song but a gorgeous and effective one.
29. “With A Little Luck” (1978)
“With A Little Luck” is so yacht-rocky that it was actually recorded on a yacht. McCartney had assembled Wings aboard the Fair Carol, a boat anchored off the Virgin Islands and outfitted with a 24-track studio, to record some songs for their new album London Town. “With A Little Luck,” which hit #1 in America, is McCartney at his softest, all pillowy synths, sunny vocal harmonies, and smooth sailing. If you can forgive a little corniness, it’s also a triumph of late-’70s studio craftsmanship.
28. “This One” (1989)
Elvis Costello co-wrote a few songs on McCartney’s 1989 album Flowers In The Dirt, but one of the LP’s finest moments is a pure McCartney original. “This One” touches on the regrets of a past relationship, missing out by waiting too long for the perfect moment to reach out. Some have speculated that “This One” is about John Lennon. That might sound heavy, but the song itself sounds like pure pop-rock bliss.
27. “Say Say Say” (1983)
The late Michael Jackson’s legacy is troubled and complex, to say the least, but there’s no denying that he and Paul McCartney are two of the greatest pop musicians of all time. And before they fell out over Jackson buying the rights to the Beatles’ catalog, they came together on Thriller’s “The Girl Is Mine” and Pipes Of Peace’s “Say Say Say.” The latter is the better song, combining McCartney’s natural gift for melody with Jackson’s synth-funk sound. McCartney played guitar and keyboard on “Say Say Say” and George Martin produced it, but the song still sounds more like Michael Jackson than McCartney. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
26. “Ever Present Past” (2007)
“I hope it’s never too late/ Searching for the time that has gone so fast / The time that I thought would last / My ever present past,” McCartney sings on the poppy Memory Almost Full standout “Ever Present Past.” The song’s propulsive main riff, catchy chorus, and production quirks underscore a restless energy that proved McCartney’s best days weren’t all behind him.
25. “More Lonely Nights” (1984)
Paul McCartney’s 1984 movie musical and notorious flop Give My Regards to Broad Street is probably best left forgotten, but its theme song endures. “No More Lonely Nights” is Sir Paul at his absolute cheesiest, a humongous ’80s power ballad with a soaring vocal melody, but he commits so hard that it works almost in spite of itself. The guitar solo from Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour certainly doesn’t hurt either.
24. “Arrow Through Me” (1979)
An underrated obscurity from Wings’ oft-maligned 1979 album Back to the Egg, “Arrow Through Me” is a deliciously funky little groove with a keyboard bassline that would fit right in on a classic track from McCartney’s future “Ebony and Ivory” duet partner Stevie Wonder. Steve Holley kills it on drums, and there’s a four-piece horn section. What more could you want from a late-1970s pop song
23. “Jenny Wren” (1975)
Named after a character from Charles Dickens’ novel Our Mutual Friend, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard’s haunting second single “Jenny Wren” is a lovely fingerpicked acoustic guitar number in the vein of “Blackbird” or “Mother Nature’s Son.” It’s pretty much just Paul singing and playing guitar, plus a mournful duduk solo from Venezuelan-born woodwind multi-instrumentalist Pedro Eustache. But sometimes less is more, and this beautifully spare song will stay with you long after its final note dies down.
22. “Let ’Em In” (1976)
If Wings at the Speed of Sound’s biggest hit, “Silly Loves Songs,” was deeply and defiantly uncool, McCartney showed that he still had a little swagger with “Let ’Em In.” Driven by a piano-and-drum groove that almost sounds like a soft-rock precursor to Spoon, “Let ’Em In” slowly unfurls into an oddly catchy martial march with a total earworm of a horn line. Noah Baumbach later ended up using the song in his 2014 movie While We’re Young, so you know it’s gotta be good.
21. “The World Tonight” (1997)
“The World Tonight,” a Flaming Pie standout (and the only album cut to be released as a single in the United States), began its life as an acoustic folk song that Sir Paul wrote on holiday. With some assistance from ELO mastermind and Beatle whisperer Jeff Lynne, who co-produced and played guitar on the track, it became something heavier and better. “I go back so far, I’m in front of me,” McCartney snarls, looking back to his past to pave a path toward the future.
20. “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” (1971)
With Ram’s centerpiece “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey,” McCartney showed that John wasn’t the only Beatle who wasn’t afraid to get weird and experimental. An early dalliance with the kind of multi-part song-suite format that would later give us “Band On The Run,” “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” is a psych-pop mini-medley that rushes headlong from one deliriously catchy song-sketch to another. It’s goofy and self-indulgent, with all kinds of silly voices and sound effects, but it holds together shockingly well thanks to McCartney’s outsized charisma and a surplus of hooks.
19. “Here Today” (1982)
On December 8, 1980, John Lennon was shot to death in New York by a mentally ill fan. Two years later, McCartney paid tribute to his fallen comrade with the moving “Here Today,” a simple, heartbreakingly beautiful ballad structured as an imagined conversation reminiscing with an old friend that culminates in an earnest “I love you.” “At least once a tour, that song just gets me,” McCartney said. “I’m singing it, and I think I’m OK, and I suddenly realize it’s very emotional, and John was a great mate and a very important man in my life, and I miss him, you know
18. “My Brave Face” (1989)
Coming off of 1986’s middling Press to Play, the extremely ’80s-sounding album that netted Macca his worst sales numbers ever and no major hits to speak of, McCartney enlisted Elvis Costello to help write several songs that ended up on 1989’s Flowers in the Dirt. “My Brave Face,” which became McCartney’s last Top 40 hit as a lead artist, is the best of the bunch, a punchy rocker that successfully married McCartney’s melodic sensibilities with Costello’s wordier New Wave edge.
17. “Fine Line” (2005)
Every McCartney album has its charms, but 2005’s Chaos and Creation in the Backyard might be the last front-to-back great album that McCartney made. Nigel Godrich had a lot to do with that. The longtime Radiohead collaborator produced the entire LP, and he got Macca to play nearly every instrument himself for the first time since McCartney II, pushing him to achieve another late-career high. The driving piano-led groove of lead single “Fine Line,” for example, sounds way more vital and urgent than anyone could’ve expected from Sir Paul in 2005.
16. “Another Day” (1971)
Like much of McCartney’s solo work, critics were not kind to “Another Day” when it came out. They might have expected some kind of big statement from what turned out to be the first official single of McCartney’s solo career. Instead, they got an observational character sketch, a la “Eleanor Rigby,” of a lonely woman stuck in an unfulfilled rut of mundanity. “Another Day” may seem slight, but if you’re willing to meet the song on its own terms, the low-stakes, low-pressure energy are part of its ample appeal.
15. “Young Boy” (1997)
McCartney’s late-career highlight Flaming Pie, whose goofy title is a nod to the origins of the Beatles’ name (“It came in a vision—a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them, ‘from this day on you are Beatles with an A,’” John Lennon once joked) found him teaming up with old friends like Jeff Lynne, Steve Miller, and even Ringo Starr to try to recapture some of the old Beatles magic. “Young Boy,” which served as the album’s lead single everywhere except the U.S., is one of its most memorable tracks, a wistful rocker with some searing guitar work from Miller.
14. “Every Night” (1971)
Paul McCartney recorded “Every Night” the same day as “Maybe I’m Amazed,” and it deals with a lot of the same themes: the angst he was feeling about the Beatles’ impending breakup and the light and solace offered by his wife Linda. But where “Maybe I’m Amazed” felt like a grand declaration of love, “Every Night” is a celebration of a quieter form of domesticity. “Tonight I just want to stay in and be with you,” Paul coos as acoustic guitars strum gently behind him. It may be a silly love song, but it’s an absolutely lovely one with a characteristically effortless melody.
13. “Too Many People” (1971)
John Lennon thought a whole lot of Paul McCartney’s early solo tracks were about him. Some of them probably weren’t. “Too Many People” definitely was. McCartney vented his frustrations about how the Beatles ended with lines like “Too many people going underground,” “You took your lucky break and broke it in two,” and “Too many people preaching practices / Don’t let them tell you what you wanna be” aimed squarely at John and Yoko. And he did it in a hell of a song, too, alternating between bitingly bitter and sweetly melodic. It’s no wonder Lennon felt he had to respond later that year with the scathing “How Do You Sleep”
12. “Silly Love Songs” (1976)
Critics, including John Lennon, often derided McCartney for wasting his talent writing what they deemed silly love songs. “What’s wrong with that” McCartney asked on “Silly Love Songs,” a self-consciously light-as-air trifle that served as a rebuttal while poking a little fun at his own image at the same time. McCartney and Wings’ biggest flirtation with disco, “Silly Love Songs” merged a fluidly funky McCartney bassline with strings and horns and became a smash hit that ruled the entire year of 1976.
11. “The Back Seat Of My Car” (1971)
“The Back Seat of My Car,” Ram’s lush album closer, is one of the songs that McCartney first suggested to the Beatles during the 1969 rehearsals at Twickenham Film Studios depicted in Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 documentary Let It Be and Peter Jackson’s more recent Get Back docuseries. Written from the perspective of two lovers ready to take on the world together, “The Back Seat of My Car” is a nostalgic paean to teen romance and driving around aimlessly while hiding from overprotective parents. A piano ballad that moves from orchestral instrumentation to 1950s-style rock ‘n’ roll like a car radio changing between stations, it’s another testament to McCartney’s unparalleled skill as an arranger of immaculate pop music.
10. “Temporary Secretary” (1980)
Easily the weirdest song that Paul McCartney ever recorded, McCartney II’s “Temporary Secretary” was probably always destined to become a cult favorite. An odd narrative sketch about a creepy dude calling a temp agency set to synthesizer burbles that sound more like Kraftwerk or Devo than anything you’d expect from a former Beatle, “Temporary Secretary” is catchy and grating in equal measure—and that’s part of its bizarro charm. Whether you love it or hate it, it’s an astoundingly quirky experiment of a song that still sounds ahead of its time.
9. “Jet” (1973)
What is “Jet” actually about Honestly, who knows. McCartney has said that “Jet” is the name of a black Labrador retriever puppy he had, and he’s also said that it’s the name of a pony he once owned. What either of those have to do with suffragettes will forever be a mystery. But when you hear a song this big and immediate, asking what it’s about seems entirely beside the point. “Jet” is a huge, glammy power-pop rocker that manages to turn its one-word chorus into a shout-along anthem. That’s all you really need to know.
8. “Rock Show” (1975)
Following the wispy folk of Venus And Mars’ title track, “Rock Show” is McCartney’s big swing for the arena-rock cheap seats. Wings were built to be a live band, and “Rock Show,” a musical representation of the excitement of seeing a big rock concert that name-drops Jimmy Page, Madison Square Garden, and the Hollywood Bowl, was clearly intended to become a staple of their live sets. It comes in hot and doesn’t let up for nearly six minutes, and while McCartney is a world-class balladeer, it’s always fun when he lets loose and decides to go full rock ‘n’ roll mode.
7. “Dear Boy” (1971)
Although no one thought much of it at the time, Ram, the sole album credited to the husband-and-wife duo of Paul and Linda McCartney, is now largely beloved as a pioneering indie-pop gem. The underrated deep cut “Dear Boy” is one of its many highlights. It’s one of a number of McCartney solo tracks that John Lennon thought was about him, but McCartney has long maintained that “Dear Boy” is actually about how lucky he felt to have Linda (and how her ex-husband made a mistake in letting her go). It’s a sweet, dazed sigh of a song with achingly lovely vocal harmonies that hit like sunbeams.
6. “Junk” (1970)
It wasn’t officially released until McCartney’s 1970 self-titled solo debut, but “Junk” is one of a few tracks that actually dates back to his Beatle days. Written during the Beatles’ visit to India to study transcendental meditation in 1968, the song was passed over for inclusion on both the White Album and Abbey Road before eventually finding a home on McCartney. A beautifully melancholic little ballad reflecting on the abandoned items and forgotten memories inhabiting a junk shop, “Junk” is Sir Paul at his most intimate and affecting.
5. “Coming Up” (1980)
“Coming Up” is sort of ridiculous. It’s also sort of amazing. In 1979, shortly before the dissolution of his backing band Wings, Paul McCartney headed back to his Scottish farm and started messing around with synthesizers and all kinds of studio trickery. He came up with “Coming Up,” a jittery, horn-streaked New Wave groove that sounds kind of like Macca putting his own spin on what David Byrne and the Talking Heads were doing across the pond. Although a live rendition with Wings became a No. 1 hit in America, the home-recorded version of the song that opens McCartney II, with McCartney using a tape machine to speed his vocals up, is the superior one. John Lennon agreed: “I thought that ‘Coming Up’ was great and I like the freak version that he made in his barn better than that live Glasgow one,” he said. Lennon actually liked “Coming Up” so much that it inspired him to start recording music again—according to McCartney, anyway.
4. “Live And Let Die” (1973)
“Live And Let Die,” Wings’ iconic theme song for the 1973 James Bond film of the same name starring Roger Moore, reunited McCartney with erstwhile Beatles producer/secret weapon George Martin. Although the movie’s producers originally wanted Shirley Bassey or Thelma Houston to sing the McCartney-penned tune, Martin convinced them to let Macca do it himself, and the song is all the better for it. A perfectly bombastic piece of symphonic rock grandiosity with plenty of orchestral flourishes courtesy of Martin and a bit of reggae thrown in for good measure, “Live And Let Die” has all of the high drama and tuxedo-clad intensity that you could possibly want from a Bond theme.
3. “Let Me Roll It” (1973)
Another cut from Wings’ Band On The Run, which probably still stands as Paul McCartney’s best and most cohesive post-Beatles album, “Let Me Roll It” was seen by critics as McCartney doing a pastiche of his former bandmate John Lennon. McCartney himself has always denied that interpretation. But whatever he was doing, it worked. A slow, bluesy stomp with reverb-laden vocals and an incisive guitar riff so indelible that Lennon himself later repurposed it for his own 1974 instrumental “Beef Jerky,” “Let Me Roll It” is a stone-cold classic that was recently used to memorable effect in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1973-set coming of age movie Licorice Pizza.
2. “Maybe I’m Amazed” (1970)
The Beatles were on the verge of breaking up, and Paul McCartney could see everything he had worked so hard to preserve slipping away from him. Depressed, lonely, and estranged from his bandmates, he holed up at his farm in Scotland and retreated into himself. His wife Linda was the only one who could bring him out of his funk, and he repaid her by immortalizing their love for each other in one of the finest ballads of his career. Written at his London home studio but recorded, unlike the majority of his self-titled solo debut album, at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios, “Maybe I’m Amazed” is a heartfelt, plainspoken ode to the redemptive power of love that showcases McCartney’s singular ear for melody.
1. “Band On The Run” (1973)
It almost feels like cheating to include a song like “Band On The Run” on this list. It’s essentially three songs in one, transitioning from dreamy balladry to funk-rock to country passages, and all three of those songs are great. Inspired by a marijuana possession bust and music industry fuckery—the line “If we ever get out of here” is supposedly a direct quote from George Harrison stuck in an endless Apple Corps business meeting—Paul McCartney stitched several song ideas together into one ambitious multi-part suite about a band of rock ‘n’ roll outlaws escaping from prison. Recorded under poor conditions in Lagos, Nigeria, after Wings’ guitarist and drummer suddenly quit the band and their demo recordings were stolen at knifepoint, “Band On The Run” should’ve been an absolute mess. Instead, it was a masterpiece, an incredible flex of an album opener and a defiant middle finger to anyone who still dared to dismiss McCartney’s solo work as lightweight pablum.