History
McCartney was involved in 15 albums during this period: five solo albums; one album with his wife Linda; and nine albums with Wings (including a greatest hits compilation). Wingspan features songs from each of those albums, as well as a few singles that had not been included on Wings Greatest.
Wings was active from 1971 to 1980, but this set also includes material from McCartney's albums from earlier (1970–71) and later (1980–84) years. It does not, however, include any of McCartney's well-known collaborations with Stevie Wonder or Michael Jackson, which took place during the latter period.
The album is separated into two distinct sets: a "Hits" component which highlights commercially successful material, while "History" showcases less generally known McCartney fan favourites from the same period. On the US release, 14 of the 18 songs on "Hits" were performed by Wings, but only 9 of the 22 songs on "History" are by Wings.
Released in 2001 in conjunction with a prime time TV documentary simply called Wingspan, the associated soundtrack was a commercial success. In the United States, it went straight to #2 on the Billboard 200 with sales of 221,000 copies in the first week of its release. The album entered the U.S. chart for 14 weeks, selling approximately 970,000 units as of 2005. The album has been certified Double Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, and also reached Gold status in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. DVD release of the documentary, which dealt with McCartney's relationship with Linda Eastman and their eventual marriage, the traumatic final year of the Beatles' career and his own role in their break-up, and the story of Wings' formation and career through the 1970s toward their final dissolution in 1980, was produced by Mary McCartney, who also interviewed her father in the film.
Read more about this topic: Wingspan: Hits And History
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“The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.”
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“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)