What is Paul McCartney’s best-selling song?

When someone reaches the level of success that Paul McCartney has, the raw sales of a record don’t become that great of a concern. He had more money than he could have asked for as a Beatle, and even when he was going to war against his old bandmates when they broke up, being a member of Wings and touring the world was bound to give him an edge over the other ‘Threetles’. He may have been a bit more zany in his solo career, but that didn’t mean he had lost his ear for hooks. 

Because as far back as his debut solo album, McCartney, Macca was already making songs that would be masterpieces for any other artist. That first record was very much a DIY production, but the fact that it had a pop-rock masterpiece in ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ made everyone realise that this was still the same guy who wrote tunes like ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘We Can Work It Out’.

When working in Wings, though, McCartney felt less like a frontman and more of an overseer of every song on their albums. The focus was to showcase every member of the band in equal measure, but even if someone else would write the odd tune like ‘Medicine Jar’ or ‘Spirits of Ancient Egypt’, everyone understood that they were coming to show to hear tunes like ‘Listen To What the Man Said’ and ‘Jet’.

But while McCartney’s singles were commonly thrown into the “granny shit” category by John Lennon back in the day, there was a lot more he could explore. ‘Junior’s Farm’ had a rock edge to it, ‘Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey’ was a mini-epic on the radio, and when McCartney delved into the traditional sounds of the land he had called home for so many years, he had millions of people coming back to him on ‘Mull of Kintyre’.

So, what was Paul McCartney’s best-selling single?

Since he had spent the majority of his home life in Scotland at the time, McCartney figured he would make a tune featuring elements of his homeland. Despite only having two chords throughout most of the track, ‘Mull of Kintyre’ has all the simplicity of a traditional folk song, only this time, any famous guitar line is replaced by the mighty siren-like sound coming from the bagpipes.

Compared to every other track he had out in the late 1970s, ‘Mull of Kintyre’ managed to blow every one of them out of the water. Even when Lennon was having his comeback with ‘Whatever Gets You Thru the Night’, and George Harrison was embracing his softer side on ‘Crackerbox Palace’, everyone couldn’t get enough of McCartney’s patriotic anthem, eventually becoming one of the biggest UK singles of all time despite it never going on an official studio album.

For all of the accolades the song deserved, the fact that it made that big an impact almost didn’t make any sense. The whole point was for the music to move away from this kind of sound once the punk revolution kicked in, but even when McCartney was confronted about the song by punks on the street, he admitted that even the spiky-haired crowd were admittedly fans of his whimsical ditty.

‘Mull of Kintyre’ might not be the most substantive tune in McCartney’s entire catalogue, but its universal appeal is perfectly acceptable for a tune that was all about celebrating his home. Not every single can be of the same calibre as a song like ‘Calico Skies,’ but it might be better that his most successful single be this instead of the torture of ‘Ebony and Ivory’.

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