Who was the first Beatle to have a US number one solo album?
By the start of the 1970s, the beginning of The Beatles’ solo careers were being greeted with cautious optimism. There were the makings of brilliance between them on Abbey Road, and while it might have been said to see Let It Be displaying the uglier sides of their final years, tracks like ‘Across the Universe’ and ‘Let It Be’ were a nice postscript for their career. Just as they split into their own projects, though, McCartney was the first Beatle to send one of his records to number one in America with McCartney.
But, really, there was no sense in competition when the group broke up. Most of them just felt that they needed a break from each other, and once they were left to their own devices, every one of them had pieces of tunes left over from the past few years.
After all, The White Album sessions boasted countless tunes that didn’t make the cut, and something like ‘Child of Nature’ wouldn’t see the light of day until John Lennon rewrote the rack into ‘Jealous Guy’ for his second solo effort, Imagine. But Macca may be the standout, if only because his debut sounds so messy.
Despite him being known as the perfectionist of the group, it feels like McCartney is designed to sound deliberately unsophisticated. A lot of the tracks scan like demos compared to his other classics, and outside of a few good tunes, this would have probably been given the title of a mixtape if it were released today.
Then again, there’s a good chance that the dirty laundry behind The Beatles’ breakup ended up sending the album to number one in the States in May of 1970. It may have been competing with the release of Let It Be at the time, but it must have felt good for McCartney to be able to one-up his old mates by having the first major dent on the charts.
If McCartney’s was a ramshackle job, though, he had no idea what was in store once George Harrison unleashed All Things Must Pass. Since Ringo Starr was more equipped to make country records and John Lennon was still undergoing primal therapy, Harrison’s spiritual masterstroke was the first of its kind to rake in massive numbers across the board, peaking at number one upon release in the US, UK, and around the rest of the world.
If anything, the critics became more perplexed with McCartney once he started writing his tunes for RAM, eventually being labelled as the eccentric genius who had lost his touch when he didn’t have Lennon there to tidy up his mistakes. It would receive its just praise later for being ahead of its time, but the success of McCartney may as well have been a musical Faustian bargain for ‘The Cute Beatle’ to undergo.
Still, it’s not like he was worried about his career as a musician when he released his debut. As soon as The Beatles broke up, he was dead in the water, and with the help of Linda, he got everything moving in the right direction once again.
