Paul McCartney

This home-recorded charmer is the most humble No. 1 album in pop history. In 1970, Paul McCartney was ostracized from the rest of the Beatles and was holed up in a shack with his family on the Scottish coast. Filled with anger and frozen by the legacy of the Lennon/McCartney partnership, Macca decided just to record for fun, setting the stage for the rest of his solo career. Bypassed at the time, the future hit "Maybe I'm Amazed" is an autobiographical marvel (as is "Every Night"). "Junk" is a real beauty -- like "Teddy Boy" it was ixnayed by Lennon as a Let it Be-era Beatles song. Paul plays everything on this one.

As self-indulgent as Two Virgins or Life With the Lions, yet marketed as pop, this struck me as a real cheat at first. But I find myself won over by its simulated offhandedness. Paul is so charming a melodist (and singer) that even though many of the songs are no more than snatches, fragments, ditties, they get across, like "Her Majesty" extended to two minutes. And though Paul's do-it-yourself instrumentals stumble now and then, the only one that winds up on its fundament is the percussion-based "Kreen-Akrore." Maybe Linda should take up the drums. She wouldn't be starting from any further back than hubby. (Grade - B)