Wings - Wings at the Speed of Sound

Wings. Not Paul McCartney and Wings. Just Wings. Of course the reality is Wings was Paul's band. End of discussion. Wings at the Speed of Sound, though, is a band effort. To me, this was their best line-up. The core trio of Paul, Linda, and Denny were augmented by Jimmy McCulloch, on stringed things, and Joe English on drums. While the majority of the songs were credited to Paul and Linda, each member got a turn taking lead vocals, which I suspect was Paul's way of emphasizing Wings was a band.

As a kid, it was the radio hits I knew, and on occasion a deeper track that would get some play. This is unfortunately the album known for "Silly Love Songs," a song so deeply and truly shitty I want to drag the needle across the record. I don't, though. I persevere and who knows, it's pushing fifty years now, my long held hatred should be softening by now. Why not? I bought a Village People album ... and enjoyed it. I suppose I should just put the record on. I won't have to make any rash decisions until side two.

This is a new-to-me listen, so I'll just drop the needle and plop down a few notes as it plays. Shall we begin? Now, as with this type of jibber-jabbery entry, it's mostly based on my first listen ... which I'll be the first to admit can be problematic. Most albums need a little time to really bloom, and I suspect this will be true on Wings at the Speed of Sound too, but who knows ... at the moment I have no idea.

The album opens with "Let 'Em In," a song that still gets me. It's the best song on the first side. Not to say the others aren't good. I did like Denny's vocal on "The Note You Never Wrote," a song that will surely get better with repeated plays. The songs were decent and enjoyable and rate higher than filler ... and like I said, I'm sure another spin won't hurt. As "Wino Junko," Jimmy's song, just ended I'll go and play this again (it did get better, if you were wondering).

Yes, I'm stalling getting to the second side. Let me work up to it. For goodness sake, I'm actually singing the chorus to "Silly Love Songs" in my head. Fudge (rhymes with cluck).

Here we go ... (several minutes later) Oh, for heaven's (this one rhymes with truck) sake, "Silly Love Songs" is a bloody ear worm. I still want to hate the song, but dagnabbit, Paul's bass work is so front and centre it just propels the song. The disco strings are a syrupy touch, but I have to admit the song has legs and it's way more enjoyable than it was in my memory. It's the bass, it's all about the bass.

Oh my ... so Linda got a turn leading the band on "Cook of the House," a song that sort of defies the imagination. If you've never heard it, and all you know is that it's Linda singing, you'll already assume it's terrible ... you truly have no idea. Thankfully, it was followed and redeemed by hearing Joe English's turn on "Must Do Something About It." It's too bad it's such a generic and boring song. I have a soft spot for Joe. After he left Wings I picked up Joe's solo album Lights in the World (1980) way back when, and it had a couple of really solid songs.

While Wings at the Speed of Sound would end up being a platinum album in the States, mainly driven by two songs, "Let 'Em In" and the goofy "Silly Love Songs," the rest of the album, while enjoyable (with the exception of "Cook of the House"), doesn't really rise above being decent filler.

P.S. I have given this a few spins while you weren't here and I still stand by my initial judgment that this contained a fair bit (a lot) of filler, but I will say that after a couple of plays I really got into "Beware My Love," a song that should have seen some play as a deep cut. I'll also stand by my assessment that overall it was enjoyable ... when the band was good, they were really something - the songs took flight, you could say they had ... (wait for it, you know it's coming) ... Wings. Despite trying to credit this to Wings, well we all know this was Paul's band.