Who were the first and last Beatles to have a solo US number one?
Y’know that The Beatles lot? Yeah, turns out they had a few hits in their time.
It’s true, being in the biggest band in the world gives you something of a Midas touch in the world of pop music. One that, in their case, lasted for a long time after the band came to an acrimonious end in 1970. Because sure, it’s one thing for The Literal Beatles to have a bunch of hits, but as many famed artists can attest, just because you were in a huge band, solo fame isn’t guaranteed, just look at the non-Michael Jacksons. John Fogerty’s non-CCR career needed a decade to pick up any steam whatsoever.
Come on now, though, it’s The Beatles we’re talking about. Their commercial dominance aside, by the end of their time as The Fabs, they were essentially four solo artists who just so happened to put their songs on the same albums. They were primed for solo careers because, for the last four years of the band, we’d more or less been listening to their solo careers and had an idea of what to expect. Then the band came to an end, and the only thing the world was talking about was what came next.
No, Fab looked forward to their solo career as much as George Harrison, though. His whole deal had been that he’d been begging for more of his songs to be featured on the records, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. He had a backlog of great songs just waiting to be released, so the smart money was on him to storm out of the gates to an early lead. This was exactly what happened as Harrison was the first Beatle to have a solo number one hit.
Now, to be clear, a part of this was due to Harrison releasing his solo material first. There wasn’t a Blur Vs Oasis style chart battle, Harrison just released All Things Must Pass and its lead single ‘My Sweet Lord’ first. However, each Fab released solo records in the same year and All Things Must Pass and ‘My Sweet Lord’ outsold the lot of them, with the song becoming the biggest selling single of 1971. I’m surprised the sheer vindication Harrison felt didn’t rip a hole in time.
So, which of The Beatles had their last solo number one hit?
The strange part was that, while all the Beatles had healthy sales in their solo careers (obviously), Harrison was the only one to become a genuine superstar when he went solo. Lennon and McCartney in particular had (relatively) stuttering solo debuts in the form of McCartney’s, erm, McCartney and Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band. Now, today both of them are hailed as masterpieces but that was not the case upon their initial release.
McCartney, in particular, had to bear the slings and arrows of being “The Man Who Split Up The Beatles,” and the reviews for his solo debut were where he got the majority of these slings and arrows. Lennon got his critical lashings for Plastic Ono Band’s awkward politics and unflinching personal excoriations, but both records sold very well. Eventually, though, each Beatle would settle into the early 1970s, where each of them was one of the biggest hitmakers on the planet. Hell, even Ringo had a pair of number one hits with ‘Photograph’ and the deeply regrettable ‘You’re Sixteen’.
However, this period wouldn’t last forever, and eventually, the time would come when a Beatle would have a solo hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for the last time. As you can imagine, this is a feat stained with tragedy. After the murder of John Lennon on December 8th, 1980, his recent single ‘(Just Like) Starting Over) rocketed to number one on nearly every singles chart in the world, staying there for five weeks as the world processed its grief.
While McCartney would have a number one hit as collaborations with Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder afterwards, there’s something powerful in the fact that the last solo hit from The Beatles begins with the line “Our life together is so precious together”.
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