Top 10 Denny Laine Songs

Laine begins this popular Wings song with a straight face, offering a stoic lyric – "The grand old painter died last night" – only to see it dissolve into a raucous funeral party: "Drink to me, drink to my health / You know I can't drink anymore." "Picasso's Last Words" also features a reunion of sorts with Ginger Baker, who supplies the song with shaker percussion. Laine worked with him in 1970 as part of the former Cream drummer's Air Force.

McCartney offers a great counterpoint vocal, and the band is in fine musical form throughout the follow up to Band on the Run. Still, "Spirits of Ancient Egypt" almost came off as a middle-of-the-road Wings throwaway until finally springing to life as a muscled prog rocker on the live Wings Over America LP and the Rockshow concert movie.

Anyone who bothered to flip over McCartney's 007 theme song found a nifty little gift: this fun cut about doing absolutely nothing. (Maybe McCartney wrote it in the quiet aftermath of the Beatles' breakup?) "I Lie Around" was the first released Wings song to feature someone other than McCartney singing lead.

Influenced by Rubber Soul-era Beatles, this country-pop tune from Laine's first post-Wings solo album is infused with John Lennon-style melancholy. All of Wings' Red Rose Speedway-period members appear on the song, since it's actually an outtake from those album sessions: McCartney brought his bass, Henry McCullough plays guitar, Denny Seiwell is on drums and Linda's there too. It's the only solo cut to make our list of the Top 10 Denny Laine Songs.

The first official songwriting collaboration between Laine and McCartney, "No Words" – an uplifting meditation on wordlessly loving someone – was an unfinished tune by Laine that he brought along to Wings' Band on the Run sessions for completion by the trio.

A first-rate mid-tempo McCartney number with a thoughtful guitar solo by Jimmy McCulloch, "The Note You Never Wrote" may be the best song on a very uneven Wings album. It certainly couldn't have been better sequenced, coming second in the album's track listing, right after the LP's hit single "Let 'Em In." This is a way better song, too.

Long the biggest-selling non-charity song in U.K. chart history, Wings' Celtic-tinged "Mull of Kintyre" combines McCartney's love of Scotland (where he's owned a farm since the Beatles' heyday) with Laine's underrated gift of songcraft. "Mull of Kintyre" was recorded during a break from the sessions for 1978's London Town, and became the first song to ever sell two million copies in the U.K. – even though it stiffed in the U.S.

This desperate retort from Wings' final album is all about a man losing control of a relationship – and apparently it's not the first time, judging by the song's title. "Again and Again and Again" was recorded with help from McCartney and the unheralded Wings lineup that included Lawrence Juber and Steve Holly. Combined with producer Chris Thomas, who worked with the Sex Pistols, the group brings a punk-style edge to this track.

Laine sang "Go Now" at almost every single Wings concert in the '70s. But the original version – which he recorded with the Moody Blues a decade earlier – is the definitive take. The song underscores the gritty R&B elements that would disappear once Justin Hayward arrived and took the Moody Blues in a different direction.

Laine's most propulsive contribution to Wings, and a highlight of the 2013 remaster of the Rockshow concert movie, "Time to Hide" is marked by a heavy blues interplay of guitar and a walking bass line from McCartney. That combo gives "Time to Hide" a Beatles-meets-Cream feeling. But Laine's vocal, as searing as it is insistent, remains the center point. It's also, quite possibly, his all-time best.