Retro Roundup: 1970s hits outside the Top 10 Part 51: Solo Beatles Part 2

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Retro Roundup: 1970s hits outside the Top 10 

Part 51: Solo Beatles Part 2

By Joel Goldenberg 

The Suburban

Jan 12, 2026

Paul McCartney, with Wings, performs Letting Go.

YouTube

We now continue with the many hits of the solo Beatles in the 1970s that did not reach the top-10, in many cases because the quality of songs started to dip. We resume with Paul McCartney:

Letting Go (#39)- Just as I always had the feeling that the zest with which Glen Campbell sang his 1969 hit Galveston was an indication of his happiness with the state of his career at that point, I also felt that the overall feel of Paul McCartney and Wings' 1975 Venus and Mars album, confident, giddy and lighthearted, was a sign of McCartney's joy at achieving both critical and commercial success with the previous Band On the Run album, and also at assembling a band that, with the exception of having to replace a drummer, would achieve massive success touring. One of the results of that joyous atmosphere was the very fun Listen To What the Man Said, which hit #1 and was my song of the summer of 1975 during my stay in summer camp. I only got familiar with the entire Venus and Mars album years later, including in its inferior quadraphonic mix on a DTS compact disc. Letting Go is a fun, but not wholly commercial rocker, with a great McCartney vocal and an echo effect giving it an extra sense of power. This song, as was much of the LP, was also geared towards live performance, including allowing other band members to contribute and sing songs. Maybe that orientation gave me the impression of the feeling of giddiness that, to me, dominates the album.

Venus and Mars Rock Show (#12): When it comes to the Venus and Mars album being geared towards live performance, this was Exhibit #1 as it was the first song played during Wings' tours in 1975 and 1976, the latter in North America. The lyrical theme, after all, is the atmosphere at a concert, and about live performances. This medley, as with the previous song, is a lot of fun but not nearly as commercial as Listen To What the Man Said. Also, as per the aforementioned quadraphonic mix of the LP, the one applied to this medley was my least favourite on the album, with the sound drifting to one side at one point instead of surrounding the listener.

Girls' School (#33): By the time we got to this okay rocker, whose lyrics were based on pornographic movie titles, McCartney and Wings had just gone through a winning streak of massive proportions, with two huge hits from the Wings At the Speed of Sound album (Silly Love Songs and Let 'Em In), an ultra successful North American tour with great concerts during which the reception by the public nearly matched Beatlemania proportions (Ringo Starr even joined McCartney on stage at one point, to present Paul with flowers), and a top-10 hit with a version of the classic Maybe I'm Amazed from the very successful Wings Over America 3-LP set. (I far prefer the 1970 studio version, which itself should have been released as a single.)

After this flurry of activity, Wings took a break with the news that Linda McCartney was pregnant, and work soon began on what became the London Town LP. In the meantime, the non-LP Girls School was released in between albums. But that's far from the whole story. The B-side was the traditional-sounding Scottish-oriented song Mull of Kintyre, which only hit a lowly #45 on the Adult Contemporary chart in North America. But in England, it was such a massive hit that it bested the Beatles' own She Loves You as the country's best selling single. It obviously struck a chord with the British public, including the fact it's a great group singalong. Dare I say it's to United Kingdom nostalgia as Paul's later and much derided Wonderful Christmastime is to the late 1970s Christmas season. Light in tone and an utterly irresistible earworm. That Christmas song gets heavy airplay today, especially on U.S. radio and on American shopping centre speakers, as does Elton John's great 1970s song Step Into Christmas.

Next time: McCartney's late 1970s hits.