The Last.fm should unite "Paul McCartney & Wings" with only "Wings". They have always been a band only. There is no such separation contained in the tag name. Should join the scrobbles on one page only, for the Wings.
Last.FM should merge "Wings" & "Paul McCartney & Wings" since it is two names for the same group. No matter how you look at it "Wings" was a band on its own with McCartney clearly as the front figure but don't forget that every member of "Wings" contributed to the songwriting and their sound. If Paul hadn't intended "Wings" to be its own thing he would have kept releasing albums under his own name. [2]
All of my Wings music is tagged as "Wings". Less clutter, and truer to McCartney's intentions (this is one of the few times I have chosen to deviate from MusicBrainz's tags).
Yes, I know all that, and I've got this in mind before tagging it. But as I saw there were Wings and Paul McCartney & Wings with pretty as much listeners, and Musicbrainz named them like that too.
Keep in mind, mota_boy, that those two are Paul McCartney & Wings only because of the record label; Paul claimed to not've even been aware that they were released as such! I don't know how much truth there is to that, but it's obvious that it was always Wings in *his* head, and he of all people should have the final say, shouldn't he? But yeah, David, I'd totally agree that Flaming Pie is his most successful post-Wings effort! That's if we don't consider McCartney II post-Wings, since it was technically made while Wings was still an active unit.
Last.FM should merge "Wings" & "Paul McCartney & Wings" since it is two names for the same group. No matter how you look at it "Wings" was a band on its own with McCartney clearly as the front figure but don't forget that every member of "Wings" contributed to the songwriting and their sound. If Paul hadn't intended "Wings" to be its own thing he would have kept releasing albums under his own name.
The Beatles were a band; Wings is essentially a McCartney solo project. Flaming Pie is great, Flower in The Dirt is good for 80s music. I don't buy the argument his genius ran out, but I do think Flaming Pie is his most brilliant post Wings.
Why don´t just unite Paul McCartney, Wings and Paul McCartney and the Wings in one sole band? I know there are a lot of differences, and discussions, but it just don´t seem right to see his music split. Deep Purple, Iron Maiden and so many other bands had plenty of periods and changes but the name is just one. I think that is a historical debate, not a tag debate. When we look at the number of songs played, it seems Paul McCartney is little listened! And Why? Because of so many categorization and divisions.
And by your argument, shouldn't you be tagging a lot of Paul's Beatles stuff as Paul McCartney, too? What are his songs on Let It Be and Abbey Road if not Paul telling John, Paul, and Ringo exactly what to play, just as he so often did later with his Wings bandmates?
And actually, Tug of War/Pipes of Peace is a perfect example: if the final Wings sessions in 1980, which featured a bunch of songs from those two, had been successful, a Wings follow-up to Back to the Egg (had Paul the presence of mind to pull the best tracks) could've been really good. As is, both Tug & Pipes suck! And after that, Paul seemed to really struggle to get a good sound on any of his albums. Off the Ground has a *great* band sound but not enough good songs; only Flaming Pie and Chaos and Creation manage to get an interesting post-Wings album-length coherence out of McCartney, and C&C needed Nigel Godrich for that anyway.
As for Mr. Denny Laine, London Town wouldn't be half the album it is without his input, and he had a surprising amount of input into the others as well. But the main point is, even if Paul McCartney did 90% of the creative work, he *wanted* to be playing with that band, with those musicians, and (as far as I'm concerned) did his best work for them. The demise of Wings also marks the spot where I think Paul's genius finally ran out. (I consider Paul's glory period to be 1968 to 1980, and that coincides almost exactly with Wings' tenure. I'm not as keen on his really poppy, more straightforward early Beatles stuff, pre-White Album, and I think he lost the thread once he got back with George Martin for Tug of War.)