If You’re Only Going to Buy One Greatest Hits Set From… Paul McCartney

It took me awhile to get back to this, but I did remember.

John Lennon released eight studio albums over his solo career.  (I’m not counting Two Virgins, Life With the Lions, or The Wedding Album, which are more aural collages than anything else; I am counting Double Fantasy and Milk and Honey, which are John and Yoko Ono albums and contain an equal number of songs from each.)  My piece on Lennon’s greatest hits sets listed 16 anthologies/hits sets to choose from (most of which are now out of print, but they were around at one time or another).

Paul McCartney has released 24 studio albums over his solo career.  (These are pop/rock albums under his name; I’m not including his five classical albums, an early soundtrack, or albums released under pseudonyms like Percy “Thrills” Thrillington or The Fireman.)  And the number of anthologies/hits sets Paul’s dropped during that time?  Four.  (Well, more or less.)

Go figure.  But it sure makes writing this a lot easier.  It helps that all four are still available for download (the most recent just arrived a few months ago).

Now, the bad news.  I’m guessing McCartney himself is the one who’s compiling his hits sets (or at least he has to approve them), because there are some running threads through all four:

 

• No Beatles songs whatsoever (not surprisingly); nothing Paul didn’t write himself (a little more surprisingly, since he’s had a few nifty remakes).
• Different versions depending on location (especially All the Best!, which has a completely different configuration in the UK and Canada than in the US).
• Not in chronological order.
• Important non-album songs are missing.  Three songs that appeared only on singles – “Give Ireland Back to the Irish” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” both from 1972, and Paul’s last top 10 hit, the otherwise innocuous “Spies Like Us” movie theme – are utterly unavailable for download as a result.  (Neither is “Wonderful Christmastime” – a song I personally can’t stand – but that’s at least on McCartney II and a few Christmas anthologies.)  The live version of “Maybe I’m Amazed” – the one that actually hit the top 10 – isn’t on any of these sets either; only the studio version.  And there are a few other lesser songs that didn’t make any of the hits sets but are still on their studio albums.  Still, no matter what you think of those first three songs, to not have three fairly big hits in both territories unavailable anywhere either means Paul hates them or somebody’s not paying attention.
• None of them are complete (mostly as a result of missing some of those non-album tracks, but there's generally a couple of hits missing on every set).

So if you’re living in the UK or Canada, it’s probably best to get that edition of All the Best!  There are two songs missing from that version on the American one:  “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” (which was not released as a single in the UK, although it hit #1 in Canada), and “Junior’s Farm” (#16 in the UK, #10 in Canada, #3 in the US).  In exchange, you get “Mull of Kintyre” (which was a monster #1 hit in the UK, but relegated to the B-side of the nonentity “Girls’ School” here), “Pipes of Peace” (the only thing worth hearing from that album), and two songs that were top 10 in the UK but weren’t released here in the States:  “We All Stand Together” and “Once Upon a Long Ago.”

Over here, I’ll reluctantly guide you toward spending a lot of money.  (I did the same thing with Lennon, so I suppose it’s only fair.)

Pure McCartney

The deluxe edition, available on disk by Amazon for $31.66 and for download at $33.49 ($34.99 on iTunes), has 67 songs, and is as close to complete as we’re apparently going to get.  To make sure we’re good and confused, there’s also a 39-song, two-disk set ($18.99 for the download on Amazon and $19.99 on iTunes), which has a lot of the essentials, but not everything.  If you want a complete overview, make sure you get one labeled “Deluxe Edition” with 67 songs – this is especially important on Amazon, which has done a lazy job of differentiating the two.  I suppose you want to save money, you could get the cheap version and download a few extra songs to fill in the gaps.

Here’s what’s available beyond that (links are to the Wikipedia entries):

Wings’ Greatest (1978) – a farewell gift to Capitol Records before Paul temporarily split for Columbia, this 12-song set was perfectly okay, but three major hits (“Helen Wheels,” “Venus and Mars/Rock Show,” and the #1 “Listen to What the Man Said”) are missing.  So this could have be an all-encompassing double vinyl album – and it still could be an all-encompassing single-disk CD if anybody cared to update the track listing.  Apparently out of print on disk (well, Amazon wants $54.19 for a new copy – used copies are pretty easy to find), $11.49 for the download on Amazon, $11.99 on iTunes.

All the Best! (1987) – basically an updated version of Wings’ Greatest, with most of Paul’s biggest hits from the subsequent nine years (excluding “Take It Away” and the aforementioned “Spies Like Us”).  Same prices online as Wings’ Greatest means this is the best of the one-disk options.  $39.00 for the physical disk means Amazon doesn’t want you to buy that format.

Wingspan: Hits and History (2001) – well, if you felt like you needed more from the 1970-1984 era than All the Best!, here ya go.  But for a two-disk set containing more, it means more album cuts and songs Paul likes.  “Take It Away” makes the grade here, but none of the other non-album tracks did, and both of Paul’s early ‘80s duets, “Ebony and Ivory” and “Say Say Say” are here either, despite their being gigantic hits.  (It’s possible Paul was angry with Michael Jackson over losing the Beatles’ publishing catalog to him, but then why blame Stevie Wonder?).  Moreover, there’s nothing he recorded after 1984 – I admit he hasn’t had a lot of big hits in the States since then, but why not throw a few of the lesser charting songs in?  $18.99 for download on Amazon and $19.99 on iTunes.  I’d probably lean toward the two-disk Pure McCartney than this one, which is both better selected and has both of the duets.

In case you want to make a comparison between all these albums, here’s a list:

Song Title	UK Peak	US Peak	Wings Greatest	All the Best! (UK / Canada)	All the Best! (USA)	Wingspan	Pure McCartney (39 tracks)	Pure McCartney (67 tracks)
Another Day	2	5	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey	-	1	Yes		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
The Back Seat of My Car	39	-
Give Ireland Back to the Irish	16	21
Mary Had a Little Lamb	9	28
Hi Hi Hi	5	10	Yes			Yes		Yes
C Moon	5	10		Yes	Yes	Yes
My Love	9	1	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Live and Let Die	9	2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Helen Wheels	12	10				Yes
Jet	7	7	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Band on the Run	3	1	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Junior's Farm	16	3	Yes		Yes	Yes		Yes
Sally G	-	17
Listen to What the Man Said	6	1		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Letting Go	41	39
Venus and Mars/Rock Show	-	12				Yes		Yes
Silly Love Songs	2	1	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Let 'Em In	2	3	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Maybe I'm Amazed (live)	28	10
Seaside Woman	-	59
Mull of Kintyre	1	-	Yes	Yes		Yes	Yes	Yes
Girls' School	-	33
With a Little Luck	5	1	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
I've Had Enough	42	25
London Town	60	39
Goodnight Tonight	5	5		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Old Siam, Sir	35	-
Getting Closer	60	20
Arrow Through Me	-	29					Yes	Yes
Wonderful Christmastime	6	-
Coming Up/Coming Up (Live at Glasgow)	2	1		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Waterfalls	9	-				Yes		Yes
Ebony and Ivory [with Stevie Wonder]	1	1		Yes	Yes		Yes	Yes
Take It Away	15	10				Yes
Tug of War	53	53				Yes
The Girl Is Mine [with Michael Jackson]	8	2
Say Say Say [with Michael Jackson]	2	1		Yes	Yes		Yes	Yes
Pipes of Peace	1	-		Yes		Yes	Yes	Yes
So Bad	-	23
No More Lonely Nights	2	6		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
We All Stand Together	3	-		Yes				Yes
Spies Like Us	13	7
Press	25	21						Yes
Stranglehold	-	81
Only Love Remains	34	-
Once Upon a Long Ago	10	-		Yes
Ferry Cross the Mersey [with The Christians, et al]	1	-
My Brave Face	18	25
The One	18	94
Figure of Eight	42	92
Put It There	32	-
Birthday (live)	29	-
All My Trials	35	-
Hope of Deliverance	18	83
C'Mon People	41	-
Young Boy	19	-
The World Tonight	23	64					Yes	Yes
Beautiful Night	25	-						Yes
No Other Baby	42	-
From a Lover to a Friend	45	-
Freedom	-	97
Tropic Island Hum	21	-
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [with U2]	-	48
Fine Line	20	-						Yes
Jenny Wren	22	-					Yes	Yes
Dance Tonight	26	26					Yes	Yes
Ever Present Past	85	-
Wonderful Christmastime [2007 rerelease]	44	-
Wonderful Christmastime [2011 rerelease]	72	-
He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother [with The Justice Collective]	1	-
Only One [with Kanye West]	28	35
FourFiveSeconds [with Rihanna and Kanye West]	3	4
All Day [with Kanye West et al]	18	15