All the Best (1987) 


 


  1. Band on the Run
  2. Jet
  3. Ebony and Ivory
  4. Listen to What the Man Said
  5. No More Lonely Nights
  6. Silly Love Songs
  7. Let 'Em In
  8. Say Say Say
  9. Live and Let Day
  10.Another Day
  11.C Moon
  12.Junior's Farm
  13.Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey
  14.Coming Up
  15.Goodnight Tonight
  16.With a Little Luck
  17.My Love

 

By the late 1980s, Paul McCartney’s solo catalogue had become unwieldy enough to require a proper summation, and All the Best! delivered just that—a single-disc overview of his post-Beatles success, drawing from both his solo ventures and his years fronting Wings. It’s tidy, well-sequenced, and about as definitive as a single disc can be—though, as always with McCartney, the details get a little fuzzy depending on your postal code.

Two primary versions of the album were released: one for the American market, another for the UK. The rationale was simple enough—McCartney’s commercial reach had always been transatlantic, but not always symmetrical. A track like Mull of Kintyre, for instance, was a massive number one in Britain, but barely registered a blip in the U.S., where listeners were less keen on Scottish folk stylings. As a result, it’s absent from the American edition, much to the chagrin of completists.

Still, what’s here is generally what ought to be. From Band on the Run and Jet to Live and Let Die and Maybe I’m Amazed, the hits are accounted for, and sequenced with a surprising sense of flow given their chronological and stylistic sprawl. If it leans slightly toward the polished and familiar rather than the daring and obscure, that’s by design. This was aimed at the mass market, not the diehards mining B-sides.

Clocking in at around 70 minutes, the CD format allowed for a generous—if not exhaustive—tracklist. McCartney, ever the prolific hitmaker, could easily have filled a second disc (and would, more or less, with Wingspan over a decade later). But as a compact, accessible greatest hits collection, All the Best! lives up to its billing. It may not be all the best, but it’s certainly enough of it to satisfy the casual fan and reassure the curious that, yes, Paul really did keep writing the hits long after the Beatles called it a day.

Go back to the main page
Go To Next Review