Depending on who you ask, The Beatles were either a bunch of overrated Scousers or the single most influential rock band of all time. Wherever you stand, we’re actually here to talk about what one of The Beatles did after the breakup.
Sir Paul McCartney’s next band, Wings, had plenty of commercial success in the mid-to-late Seventies. Critics, however, had mixed opinions at the time. For instance, they said Wings was less a real band and more a vehicle for Sir Paul. I fail to see the problem with that, but the criticisms apparently bothered him regardless. When Wings went to record their fifth album, Sir Paul encouraged the rest of the band to contribute more. That brings us to Wings’ At The Speed Of Sound, released in March 1976. Every member of the band sang lead vocals on at least one song, while two songs on the album were written or co-written by band members other than Sir Paul and his wife Linda. But lest they all forgot who was in charge, Sir Paul still produced the album himself. And also, the two hit singles – “Silly Love Songs” and “Let ‘Em In” – were written by Sir Paul and Linda. Not that I’m complaining. The album was huge on both sides of the Atlantic. In the U.S. specifically, it hit #1 on the Billboard 200 and went Platinum. “Silly Love Songs” was the single biggest Hot 100 hit of 1976. It was also a #1 hit on Adult Contemporary, as was “Let ‘Em In.” Both songs, however, peaked at #2 in the U.K.
But that’s all the numbers out of the way. Is the album any good? Well, as I said, critics at the time were rather lukewarm on Wings, and At The Speed Of Sound was no exception. I think critics might have been stuck to the idea that The Beatles were strictly a rock band, even though rock and roll was still considered “pop music” when The Beatles started out. And while John Lennon and George Harrison got more experimental as time went on, Sir Paul still had his pop tendencies. Case in point, if you go back to the White Album, Paul wrote “Mother Nature’s Son” and John wrote the song right after it, “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey.”
To tie that to Wings’ At The Speed Of Sound, “Silly Love Songs” was a response to critics (and John Lennon) who criticized Sir Paul for writing lightweight love songs. Learning that, the message of the song turns into a self-aware “Yeah, I write love songs, but I’m good at it. Now watch this become a hit!” Moving on to the rest of the album, the song that critics praised the most was a hard rock tune called “Beware My Love.” Humorously, it was the B-side to “Let ‘Em In,” despite being extremely different in sound and style. In fact, “Let ‘Em In” is representative of most of the album’s content: soft rock with the occasional disco thrown in for good measure. There are still more energetic rock songs like “Cook Of The House” (the B-side to “Silly Love Songs”) and the aforementioned “Beware My Love.” Nothing as hard as “Helter Skelter,” but they still add variety.
All in all, At The Speed Of Sound is well-written and catchy. Plus, “The Note You Never Wrote” mentions my home city of Baltimore, so I have to recommend it.
Leave a Reply