10 Rock Albums That Were Ahead Of Their Time

Coming out of the '70s, Paul McCartney was not really having the best time in his solo career. Though Wings had kept things rolling through thick and thin for most of the decade, his imprisonment for drug possession and the cancelled Wings tour led to him wanting a bit of a change of pace, without the help of the rest of his band. Paul was off on his own again, and he figured that he'd hire a machine and go berserk whenever he went into the studio.

While McCartney II was never meant to be a proper album from Macca, what turns up on here was some of his most futuristic songs of the time. Coming from the man who was known for becoming the softy of the former Beatles, hearing him test his limits on songs like Temporary Secretary or write a song like Waterfalls with only synthesizers was using technology in a much different way than what was happening on the pop scene. On some of the singles, Paul even seems more in tune with the new wave scene some of the time, with Coming Up sounding more like a Talking Heads song than anything to come out of a former Beatle.

Though most mainstream fans were more baffled than anything else when listening to this album, McCartney II has gotten much more appraisal in later life, being a direct influence on bands like Hot Chip and even getting John Lennon back into making music when he heard it playing on the radio in New York. The music business can be fairly intimidating, but there aren't as many rules either, and McCartney II gave everyone else permission to let out their freaky side every once in a while.