![]() ![]() McCartney then carried out overdubs on the track at AIR in London. He and Wonder recorded it together at George Martin's AIR Studios in Montserrat during sessions lasting from 27 February to 2 March 1981. While writing the song, McCartney envisaged singing it with a black male singer. It was popularised by James Aggrey in the 1920s, inspiring the title of the pan-African journal The Keys, but was in use from at least the 1840s. The title was inspired by McCartney hearing Spike Milligan say, "Black notes, white notes, and you need to play the two to make harmony, folks!" The figure of speech is much older. The song uses the ebony (black) and ivory (white) keys on a piano as a metaphor for integration and racial harmony. ![]() McCartney wrote "Ebony and Ivory" at his farm in Scotland. In 2013, Billboard ranked it as the 69th-biggest hit of all-time on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. ![]() The track also appears on McCartney's All the Best! compilation (1987) and on the two-disc version of Wonder's The Definitive Collection (2002). While a major commercial hit, the song has received derision from music critics who view its message as overly simplistic and sentimental. The single marked the first time that McCartney had released a duet with another major artist and anticipated his 1980s collaborations with Michael Jackson. McCartney and Wonder began recording "Ebony and Ivory" in Montserrat in early 1981. During the apartheid era, the South African Broadcasting Corporation banned the song after Wonder dedicated his 1984 Academy Award for Best Original Song to Nelson Mandela. The single reached number one on both the UK and the US charts and was among the top-selling singles of 1982 in the US. Written by McCartney, the song aligns the black and white keys of a piano keyboard with the theme of racial harmony. It was issued on 29 March that year as the lead single from McCartney's third solo album, Tug of War (1982). Apart from the latter, these are modest pleasures buried on an album that may have been a chart-topping blockbuster, but now seems like one of McCartney's most transient works." Ebony and Ivory" is a song that was released in 1982 as a single by Paul McCartney featuring Stevie Wonder. There is a bit of charm to the record, arriving in Linda McCartney's awkwardly sung "Cook of the House," the mellow "Must Do Something About It," and especially "Beware My Love," the best-written song here that effortlessly moves from sun-drenched harmonies to hard rock. And that's the case for most of At the Speed of Sound, as tracks like "She's My Baby" play like the hits, only without memorable hooks. They have sweet, nice melodies and are well crafted, but as songs they're nonexistent, working primarily as effervescent popcraft of their time. Consider this: the two hits "Let 'Em In" and "Silly Love Songs" are so lightweight that their lack of substance seems nearly defiant. This, ironically, winds up as considerably less cohesive than its predecessor despite these efforts for community, not because Wings was not a band in the proper sense, but because nobody else in the band pulled as much weight as McCartney, who was resting on his laurels here. ![]() If Venus and Mars had the façade of being an album by a band, At the Speed of Sound really is a full-band effort, where everybody gets a chance to sing, and even contribute a song. ![]()
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