10 Songs That Prove Wings Are A Better Band Than You Think
The Beatles had crashed to Earth but Paul McCartney was still flying high in the Seventies.
When Alan Partridge called Wings, “The band The Beatles could have been,” it was one of many lines designed to make him look a little bit clueless.
After all, Wings have long been a short hand for rock mediocrity. Massive in their day but critically derided in an era when rock journalists prized self conscious seriousness over McCartney’s melodic, genre hopping playfulness.
Yes, Paul struggled to follow The Beatle’s brilliance but so did everybody else. For decades. Wings nonetheless have a back catalogue littered with gems. We’ve picked out just ten of many for this list.
Most people know a handful of Wings songs. There was the glam stomp of Jet and multi-part majesty of Band On The Run. They were also responsible for Live and Let Die. The latter might be McCartney’s greatest ever love song. He was writing the best ever Bond theme and he let his wife do the middle eight.
Then of course there’s the mega-selling, bag-pipe spattered Mull of Kintyre and My Love a song that did Mccartney’s reputation as a wet balladeer no favours.
Even Macca himself struggles to fit many Wings songs into his epic live shows. But beyond the big hits there are b-sides, album tracks and singles that prove Wings are more than just a cheap punchline.
10. Dear Friend
On their respective solo albums, Plastic Ono Band, Imagine and RAM, John Lennon and Paul McCartney had taken very public potshots at each other.
For fans it was a painful reminder that the Beatle dream was over. On the other hand there was a guilty pleasure in seeing two heroes air their dirty laundry in public. You could pick apart songs and album art looking for extra digs.
The worst and most blatant of it was probably Lennon’s How Do You Sleep. A lyrically vicious song but a bloody good one. To add insult to injury, George Harrison and Ringo Starr played on it too.
Perhaps viewing Wings as a fresh start, Paul included a raw but starkly beautiful olive branch on their debut album Wildlife.
On Dear Friend, over tense piano he asks, “Does it really mean so much to you?” Both men had found romantic love as their love for each other had soured. Perhaps Paul felt it was time they put aside their differences and tried to be happy for each other. “Dear friend, throw the wine/I’m in love with a friend of mine.”
That whole first album feels unpolished, at times half baked. Still, Dear Friend typifies the beauty available to those who can overlook a few rough edges.