The Oddest Corners of Paul's Catalog

Why Paul's Oddities Matter

Paul McCartney's catalogue includes a UK No.3 hit sung with a chorus of cartoon frogs (1984), an orchestral version of Ram released under a fake name (1977), a country single written by his father (1974), and an electronic sound collage nominated for a Grammy (2001). For a songwriter best known for melodic, carefully crafted pop, he has an unusually long list of strange side projects.

Some fans file these records under embarrassments. They are better read as the other half of the same musician. The Paul who brought tape loops to the Revolver sessions, spent time on the London avant-garde scene around the Indica Gallery in 1966 and wrote the score for the film The Family Way (1967) is the same Paul who later made the Frog Chorus and the Fireman records. The pop craftsman and the tinkerer have always shared a studio.

'Carnival of Light' is the ultimate example, and the one oddity no fan can actually buy. Recorded by the Beatles at Paul's instigation on 5 January 1967, during the Penny Lane sessions, it is a freeform sound piece of just under 14 minutes, made for the Million Volt Light and Sound Rave at the Roundhouse in London. It was played there and then shelved. It was considered for the Anthology releases in the 1990s but left off, reportedly because George Harrison did not want it included, and it has never been officially released.

Below are the oddest corners of the catalogue, roughly in order of release, with release details and a short verdict on each.

1972 to 1974: Banned Singles, a Nursery Rhyme and the Country Hams

Wings' first single, 'Give Ireland Back to the Irish', was written as a direct response to the Bloody Sunday killings in Derry on 30 January 1972. The BBC banned it. It still reached No.16 in the UK and topped the chart in Ireland. Paul followed it with, of all things, a setting of the nursery rhyme 'Mary Had a Little Lamb', released in May 1972. Critics assumed it was a sarcastic reply to the ban. Paul has said it was written for his children. It reached No.9 in the UK.

Later in 1972 'Hi, Hi, Hi' was also banned by the BBC, over its references to drugs and sex. Radio switched to the other side, 'C Moon', and the single still climbed to No.5 in the UK. That gave Wings two banned singles in its first year, a strange record for an artist so often described as the safe Beatle.

In 1974, during Wings' stay in Nashville, Paul recorded 'Walking in the Park with Eloise', a jaunty instrumental his father Jim had written decades earlier. Released in October 1974 under the name the Country Hams, it featured the Nashville session greats Chet Atkins and Floyd Cramer, with 'Bridge on the River Suite' on the B-side. It is a gentle tribute from son to father, and a reminder that Jim McCartney, who led Jim Mac's Jazz Band in the 1920s, was where Paul's musical instincts started.

1977: Percy 'Thrills' Thrillington

In 1971 Paul commissioned arranger Richard Hewson, who had worked on the orchestration of 'The Long and Winding Road', to create an easy-listening orchestral version of the whole Ram album. It was recorded that year and then shelved. Six years later, on 29 April 1977 in the UK, it came out under the name Percy 'Thrills' Thrillington, a fictional society bandleader. Paul promoted the character with ads in the music press and did not publicly confirm that he was behind it until 1989.

Thrillington works because Ram's melodies are strong enough to survive the lounge-orchestra treatment: 'Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey' and 'Too Many People' as big-band pieces show how well built those songs are. The original vinyl sold poorly and became a sought-after collector's item. It was included as a bonus disc in the 2012 Archive Collection deluxe edition of Ram and has also been reissued on its own.

It is also a very Paul prank. Few artists at his level would spend money recording an album, bury it for six years and then release it under a false name with a fake backstory.

1984: We All Stand Together and the Frog Chorus

Paul had wanted to make a Rupert Bear film since the early 1970s, when he acquired the film rights to the character. It finally came together as Rupert and the Frog Song, a short animated film directed by Geoff Dunbar and shown in cinemas in 1984 alongside Give My Regards to Broad Street. Its centrepiece song, 'We All Stand Together', credited to Paul McCartney and the Frog Chorus, reached No.3 in the UK singles chart. The frog voices were provided by the King's Singers and the choir of St Paul's Cathedral, and George Martin produced.

The song has been mocked for decades, and Paul himself has joked about it. The film, though, was a genuine success: it won the BAFTA for Best Animated Short Film in 1985 and was one of the best-selling home videos in the UK that year, far outshining the feature it accompanied. A restored version premiered on Paul's YouTube channel in 2020. Among British fans of a certain age the song is remembered with real affection, and it has lived on as a school and choir favourite.

The frog song also set up another Paul pattern: his willingness to write for children without talking down to them, which later showed up in his picture books such as Hey Grandude! (2019).

1993 to 2008: The Fireman and Liverpool Sound Collage

In 1993 Paul and the producer Youth released Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest under the name the Fireman. It is ambient dance music, long, hypnotic and built from remixed elements of Paul's Off the Ground era recordings, and it came out with no McCartney name on the front. A second Fireman album, Rushes, followed in 1998. Then in November 2008 came Electric Arguments, where the project turned into something closer to songs: each track was built in a single day's session, with Paul singing. Many fans consider it one of the most underrated records of his later career.

Liverpool Sound Collage (2000) is stranger still. It was made for an exhibition at Tate Liverpool curated by the artist Peter Blake, co-designer of the Sgt. Pepper cover, and mixes street recordings from Liverpool with fragments of Beatles studio chatter and contributions from Super Furry Animals and Youth. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album, losing to Radiohead's Kid A. A Grammy nomination in the alternative category for a McCartney record is one of the great pieces of pop trivia.

Twin Freaks (2005), a set of remixes with DJ the Freelance Hellraiser, belongs in the same corner of the catalogue. The Freelance Hellraiser had played DJ sets before the band came on during Paul's 2004 European tour, and the album shows Paul as a listener to modern electronic music, happy to let others reshape his work.

Other Curiosities Worth Tracking Down

'Temporary Secretary', from McCartney II (1980), was dismissed at the time and missed the charts when it came out as a limited 12-inch single in September 1980. Its B-side, 'Secret Friend', runs past ten minutes and is one of the most hypnotic things Paul has released. The A-side has since become a cult favourite, with a repetitive synth pattern that sounds surprisingly modern, and Paul brought it into his live shows in 2015. B-sides are full of oddities too: 'Ode to a Koala Bear', the B-side of 'Say Say Say' in 1983, is exactly as unexpected as its title.

'Wonderful Christmastime' belongs here too, even though it is now a seasonal staple. Paul made it alone in 1979 during the home sessions that produced McCartney II, built on a bubbling synthesiser part, and released it as a solo single while Wings was still active, backed with the instrumental 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reggae'. Critics were unkind. Radio stations have played it every December for more than four decades anyway.

Then there are the collaborations nobody predicted. In 2015 Paul played guitar on and co-wrote 'FourFiveSeconds' with Rihanna and Kanye West, a transatlantic hit that put him in front of a new generation of listeners.

If you want to own some of these records, the Thrillington and Fireman vinyl reissues are the most rewarding, and our guide to McCartney deep cuts picks up other overlooked songs from the same era. The best McCartney vinyl pressings guide covers which editions are worth having, and several of these oddities make good presents for the fan who already owns everything, as our gifts for McCartney fans guide explains.