Ebony and Ivory
“Ebony and Ivory” is a song that was released in 1982 as a single by Paul McCartney featuring Stevie Wonder. It was issued on 29 March that year as the lead single from McCartney’s album Tug of War. Written by McCartney, the song aligns the black and white keys of a piano keyboard with the theme of racial harmony. The single reached number one on both the UK and the US charts and was among the top-selling singles of 1982 in the US. During the apartheid era, the South African Broadcasting Corporation banned the song after Wonder dedicated his 1984 Academy Award for Best Original Song to Nelson Mandela.
McCartney and Wonder began recording “Ebony and Ivory” in Montserrat in early 1981. The single marked the first time that McCartney had released a duet with another major artist, and anticipated his 1980s collaborations with Michael Jackson. While a major commercial hit, the song has received derision from music critics who view its message as overly simplistic and sentimental. The track also appears on McCartney’s All the Best! compilation (1987) and on the two-disc version of Wonder’s The Definitive Collection (2002). In 2013, Billboard ranked it as the 69th biggest hit of all-time on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.[1]
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