Paul McCartney’s Greatest Hits

I just am not feeling political today, so let’s talk about music instead.

Way back when, I gave the Beatles challenge, wherein I listed 100 songs the Beatles had written in the period of about seven years and challenged anyone to come up with any other group or composer who had written so many memorable songs in such a short period of time.

So today I decided do the same with Paul McCartney’s solo work.

Of course the comparison is not valid; Paul has had 43 years to come up with this list, not seven. But you have to admit he’s written some pretty good songs.

There are some really bad ones, too. If I never hear “Ebony and Ivory” again, all the better. Paul’s biggest problem tends to be lyrics, even today. He needs a John Lennon challenging him to be his best and not settle for the first lyrics that come into his head. (Some of his best post-Beatles lyrics came when he worked with Elvis Costello, one of the best lyricists of our day.)

As I worked on this list, I included all of the singles (even if I didn’t like them) plus album songs I really liked. And then I surprised myself by only coming up with about 75 songs instead of 100. Just goes to show you that even Paul freakin’ McCartney couldn’t beat the Beatles even when given six times as much time.

Still, if you were making a CD of Paul’s 75 greatest hits, it would probably look like this. They’re listed in order of release date, and the number in parenthesis is the highest they reached on the Billboard chart if released as a single: