The No. 1 Song On September 1, 1971 Sounds Even More Ingenious Today

In 1971, in the wake of the Beatles' breakup and a lackluster reception to his first solo album, Paul McCartney needed a win. It arrived in the form of a multi-part, surrealistic mini-suite from the album "Ram," credited to both Paul and Linda McCartney, called "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey." The song became his first post-Beatles No. 1 hit in the U.S. by September 1, 1971, after racing up the charts from mid-August and eventually going gold.

"Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" may have originally tanked with critics, but it scored with McCartney's rock fans. The tune features multiple key and tempo changes, flugelhorn, surrealistic imagery, and the joyous refrain "Hands across the water (water) / Heads across the sky." The song is so ingenious that McCartney has never performed it live, likely due to the its multifaceted nature. Besides the various musical sections reminiscent of other McCartney compositions, there's a smattering of sound effects and an orchestral accompaniment by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Through it all, the song hangs together as a cohesive whole.

When Paul McCartney wrote "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey," he was deeply interested in surrealism, the 20th-century artistic and literary movement that began in Europe in the 1920s. These artists and writers often used the unusual juxtaposition of imagery or words to produce work that connected dreams to reality. McCartney used this technique when creating the song's lyrics, such as the phrase "butter pie" and the inclusion of Admiral "Bull" Halsey, a World War II-era U.S. admiral.

The song's "Uncle Albert" was in fact one of McCartney's uncles. "He would get on the table and he would be roaring drunk and he would read from the Bible," McCartney once recalled. This part of the tune, with lines such as "We're so sorry, Uncle Albert," was McCartney's attempt to apologize for his generation's actions that may have seemed strange to their elders. 

"Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" is another McCartney song that's nearly perfect and deserves to be required listening for younger generations, like his other mini-suites, "Live and Let Die" and "Band on the Run." Rolling Stone, which originally panned "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey," later called it "a weird masterpiece" and admitted the song had been years ahead of its time. The same must have been true of those McCartney fans who sent it to No. 1 in September 1971.