The album Paul McCartney said was a “disaster”
For a time, nothing came easier to Paul McCartney than writing a hit song. No matter what he tried, it was a resounding success that connected with fans, who went out in their droves to purchase a copy and plant the new release at the top of the charts. During the 1960s, with The Beatles, McCartney was part of a group that couldn’t stop breaking records, which he assumed would stay forever.
In McCartney’s eyes, failure is starkly different from most artists. Most of his peers will never experience what it’s like to be at the top of the mountain and have come to peace with that fact. Although he never chased chart success, it seemed to follow McCartney everywhere he went, leading to it becoming expected. As a solo artist, attaining the same level of relevancy would always be a challenge. Transitioning from the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed band of all time was easy with Wings as McCartney continued to create hit after hit.
During their time together, Wings had a strong run, releasing seven albums, four of which topped the charts in the United States. They were the perfect foil for his artistry for a while, but the group’s final record, Back To The Egg, marked the beginning of their inevitable split.
By this point, McCartney had almost been in the music business for two decades, and deep down, he knew Back To The Egg wasn’t the same calibre as most of his previous work. His gut feeling was echoed by scathing reviews of the record in the press, who were dissatisfied with his attempts at new-wave. Although commercial success isn’t a thorough metric to measure art, Back To The Egg was the lowest-charting record from Wings’ catalogue since their debut in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
McCartney believes that the record’s relative failure rested on his shoulders. He had spoken negatively about Back To The Egg before it was released, giving everyone else a free pass to join the pile-on. In an interview with Reverb, McCartney looked back upon the record and remembered: “The interesting thing is that, looking back on some of the work, some of the stuff, it’s better than you think it was, but because it got such harsh criticism … from me. The critics gave us a hard run, but I was particularly hard on us. I remember looking at a book, there was an album we did, I think it was Back to the Egg, which didn’t do well, and I remember thinking, ‘God, complete disaster.'”
Although he believed it was a disaster for many years, McCartney’s stance later softened on the record, which includes songs such as ‘Getting Closer’ and ‘Arrow Through Me’. While the chart position was not as high as he’d have wanted, it wasn’t worth losing sleep about.
It was a conversation with David Bowie that led McCartney to see the error of his ways, stating, “Years later, I remember looking at it with Bowie in this old book — one of these who-did-what Hit Parade books, looking it up — and it was like No. 8 in America. And I thought, ‘Most people would give their right bloody arms to be No. 8,’. But eight, and I wasn’t satisfied, The Beatles had been No. 1. This is all right, keeps you going. But yes, a lot of the stuff is underrated, because of that.”
Although Back To The Egg wasn’t as bad as McCartney initially believed, nor was it received as horrendously as he thought, it was still a signifier that Wings were heading towards the exit door. Furthermore, their UK tour for the album was similarly ill-fated. While the band had once been the ideal vessel for him to express himself following the death of The Beatles, the time had now come for McCartney to fly solo. In that time, he’s had plentiful more releases fail to trouble the hit parade, but now, McCartney is only concerned about artistic fulfilment, and anything else is merely a bonus.
