Some comments on each one:
1 - Red Rose Speedway - my sentimental all-time favourite. It was originally conceived as a double album but I never liked any of the extra tracks - they were basically sub-par jams and would've completely changed the album. Paul was right to leave them off the final product. Fave tracks - 'Hold Me Tight', 'Little Lamb Dragonfly' and 'Get On The Right Thing'.
2 - Band on the Run - Paul's most consistent album - it is flawless, possibly the only one in his solo career that would easily go toe-to-toe with the finest Beatles albums.
3 - Back To The Egg - Macca at his most hard-rocking, but it is also a varied journey. Features one of my favourite-ever Macca singles 'Getting Closer', and 'To You' is underrated too. Favourite track - 'Winter Rose' as ornate as a medieval garden. Love it.
4 - London Town - like RRS, this album seems to get little love in retrospect.. I think it is brilliant. From the excellent title track to the folky 'Don't Let It Bring You Down' to the hard-rocking 'I've Had Enough', it has a bit of everything. 'Cuff Link' is a great instrumental.. 'Backwards Traveller' is another fave (and the way it segues into Cuff Link is awesome).
5 - McCartney - even though it has its home-made charm, it also has the greatest song ever written of all-time (and yet was never released as a single!!!) - 'Maybe I'm Amazed'. And it has 'Every Night'. The instrumentals are cool. 'Oo You' is an underrated rocker. Remarkable given it was Macca playing every instrument on it.
6 - Wings at the Speed of Sound - another underrated Wings album. Featuring Denny's best song ('Time To Hide') and I love the warm feel of the keyboards throughout on the album. Best song: 'Beware My Love' - still cool to hear after all these years. 'Must Do Something About It' is another great song and Joe English does a fantastic job on lead vocals.
7 - Tug of War - certainly has a digital feel to it, and 'Take It Away' is one of his greatest singles. Featuring collaborations with Stevie Wonder and Carl Perkins, overall it's solid throughout. However, Macca improved the recordings of 'Wanderlust' and 'Ballroom Dancing' on Broad Street a couple of years later. Underrated track - 'Somebody Who Cares' - featuring a great acoustic guitar solo too.
8 - Venus and Mars - the only fallback on this album is the trebly brittle engineering. But the songs are varied as ever, from music hall ('You Gave Me The Answer') to hard-rock/pre-punk ('Rock Show'). Letting Go is such an awesome track. Fave song: 'Love In Song'. Beautiful.
9 - Ram - this is usually very high on most people's ranking lists. It's not that I dislike the album, I do really love it. 'Too Many People' would have to be one of the greatest openers on any McCartney album. Maybe the one thing that draws me back a bit, are Linda's vocals on the latter part of Side 2 particularly, 'Long Haired Lady' and 'Back Seat Of My Car' are a bit shrill. Still great songs though, despite those slight flaws in execution. 'Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey' is still a fave - pure genius at work. Right up with the best Beatles work.
10 - Press To Play - a sadly underrated album, ruined by perhaps the choice in single - 'Press' (the way the synth-heavy 'Press' was recorded.. I reckon it would've been better done 'Angry'-style with raw guitar - like we hear Macca recording it in that documentary that came out at the time). But in some cases, the synths are used to great effect, on 'Good Times Coming' and 'Talk More Talk', and 'Pretty Little Head' of course. Stranglehold is an awesome opener with such swag! Footprints is an underrated folk song right up there with Blackbird as amongst his best acoustic songs, and 'However Absurd' is a neo-psychedelic masterpiece!
11 - NEW - easily the best album Macca has recorded in maybe 30 years. Well I would say Press to Play is still better, but NEW is certainly better in my eyes than Driving Rain and Flaming Pie etc. Even better than Flowers in the Dirt! The fire and imagination is back. It's modern and indie without pandering to certain styles.
12 - Chaos and Creation in the Backyard - a return to the golden era of melodies Macca is known for. It also has its share of darker moments (At The Mercy, How Kind of You, Riding To Vanity Fair etc). Favourite song - 'Promise To You Girl', but special mention goes to 'Friends To Go', and the B-side 'Comfort of Love'.
13 - Give My Regards to Broad Street - sadly ignored by even his most loyal fans, but features the best-ever recorded versions of several of his songs, including Wanderlust, Ballroom Dancing, a beautifully jazzy Long and Winding Road, Good Day Sunshine, For No One, Yesterday (superb re-rendering), Silly Love Songs with the scintillating slap-bass funky bass guitar playing taking the song to a whole new level. 'No More Lonely Nights' is one of his great singles that no one ever talks about now, and the 2 best songs on it are both hard rockers - 'Not Such a Bad Boy' and 'No Values'. I'm tempted to rank this album even higher! Heh, maybe next time..
14 - McCartney II - another album that divides Macca fans, I really like it.. Temporary Secretary is wonderful indie electronica, but there are also some good straightforward guitar-based tunes such as 'One of These Days' and the more bluesy 'On The Way' (featuring Macca out-Claptoning Eric Clapton I reckon). Fave song: 'Darkroom'!
15 - Flowers in the Dirt - featuring collaborations with Elvis Costello ('Don't Be Careless Love' in particular is an awesome song.. if only 'Veronica' was on this album too), but a fine return to form with hit singles 'My Brave Face' and 'This One'. A great rock vocal delivery on 'Figure of Eight' opens Side 2. Best song though, I reckon is 'Distractions' - a lush beautiful warm jazz-inflected number.
16 - Wings Over America - the great Wings live album, providing in some cases, renditions superior to the original studio versions. Some say this applies to Maybe I'm Amazed - (I disagree, I think the original 1970 'McCartney' version is miles better and SHOULD'VE been a single), but with Letting Go, Beware My Love, Spirits of Ancient Egypt etc, there is definitely a case for that.
17 - Wild Life - now we are getting into the more uneven albums in Macca's catalogue. The albums above me have a lot of variety but generally retains a consistent song quality regardless. From 'Wild Life' down, the 'filler element' becomes more apparent. Having said that though, there are some fab moments - 'Some People Never Know' is an unheard-by-the-masses classic, and 'Tomorrow' is another. 'I Am Your Singer' predates 'Single Pigeon' for that simple melodic charm. And the opener 'Mumbo' is insane - what a great rocker to start it off!
18 - Pipes of Peace - this is where Macca fans openly resent his 80s phase. I love the singles from this era. 'Say Say Say' is still bloody magnificent to me. I still have the 45 with 'Ode To A Koala Bear' for its b-side. And I think it showed George Martin made a brilliant transition to modern production recording techniques - it still stands up well today. Side 2 is where it lets itself down, with some dire material especially towards the end. 'So Bad' is a great track though. Fave song - 'Keep Under Cover'. Brilliant. It would be on my compilation for top Macca songs never to have made it as a single.
19 - Run Devil Run - full of fire and energy, and has some great moments. An incredible cover of 'All Shook Up'. Best songs are 'No Other Baby' and 'Try Not To Cry' (a Macca original) - that song should've been a single. Mind you, 'No Other Baby' was a good choice of single.
20 - Off The Ground - an uneven album, featuring some of my least-favourite Macca songs (Biker Like An Icon, Looking For Changes) - but some good ones too. 'Golden Earth Girl' is a lovely tune.. and favourite song would be 'Mistress and Maid' (another collaboration with Elvis Costello).
21 - Flaming Pie - another album many people rank very highly.. for me I see it as an album with too many throwaways (If You Wanna, The World Tonight, Used To Be Bad, Really Love You), and the balance made up with wistful-yet kinda-bland songs (Calico Skies, Little Willow, The Song We Were Singing etc). I do enjoy the title track though - it is a good raw Macca rocker.
22 - Memory Almost Full - I see this an an ambitious album but fails somewhat in execution. I'm not sure if the vocals are that great on some tracks. But then you've got tracks like 'Only Mama Knows' which recall the likes of 'Junior's Farm' and the best Macca rockers. My favourite songs on this are Vintage Clothes and Feet in the Clouds, which in the grand scheme of things, function as a small part of a greater whole. But the best song would be 'Mr Bellamy' - songwriting genius at work again.
23 - Driving Rain - could never get into this album. At the time, like most 20-somethings, I was into mostly grunge and nu-metal and Macca's stuff from Off The Ground onwards had become a bit naff. This album did nothing to change my mind.
24 - Unplugged - one of the first-ever unplugged albums it certainly has its moments and good to rediscover and listen to every now and then. Featuring charming versions of 'Every Night' and 'We Can Work It Out', and the first song Macca ever wrote - 'I Lost My Little Girl'.
25 - Electric Arguments - (even though it's Fireman it may as well be a Macca album) - I know a lot of people regard it as Macca at his more experimental but I find the loops and songs themselves lacking some true substance and they're a bit repetitive and I'm not a fan of the reverb-heavy drum sounds either. And I don't think 'Sing The Changes' was that great a song either. And yet it somehow got a lot of airplay at concert performances. Hmmm.
26 - Kisses on the Bottom - nothing on this album appeals to me at all. Well, 'My Valentine' is good, and 'The Inch Worm' (also once done by Mary Hopkin), but the rest of it - not my cuppa tea.
Well, that was fun! Should have a go at doing this with the Beatles albums!