The 1970s File Feature
Getting Closer
Getting Closer Wings Kicks Off Back to the Egg By 1979, Paul McCartney had spent the better part of a decade proving that life after the Beatles could be jus…
01 The Story
Getting Closer — Wings Kicks Off Back to the Egg
By 1979, Paul McCartney had spent the better part of a decade proving that life after the Beatles could be just as commercially vital as life within them. Wings, the band he formed with his wife Linda and a rotating cast of collaborators, had already delivered massive hits across the 1970s, from the reggae-tinged "Live and Let Die" to the chart-dominating "Silly Love Songs." By the end of the decade, though, punk and new wave had reshaped the sound of British rock, and McCartney responded not by ignoring the shift but by sharpening his own band's attack. "Getting Closer" opened Back to the Egg, Wings' final studio album, with a burst of energy clearly attuned to the harder-edged rock landscape around it, a statement that the band intended to remain part of the conversation rather than retreat into nostalgia.
A Band in Its Final Form
By the time "Getting Closer" was recorded, Wings had reconfigured its lineup once again, adding guitarist Laurence Juber and drummer Steve Holley to the core of Paul, Linda, and Denny Laine. This version of the group, tighter and more rock-oriented than some of its predecessors, gave McCartney a vehicle for material with more bite than the soft pop occasionally associated with Wings' mid-1970s output. Back to the Egg was conceived partly as a response to punk's raw energy, and "Getting Closer" served as the album's opening statement of intent, a song that moves with urgency rather than settling into easy melody.
Sharp Guitars and a Restless Pulse
The track leans on driving guitar work and a propulsive rhythm section, McCartney's vocal pushed into an urgent, higher register that matches the song's forward momentum. Where earlier Wings hits often prioritized melodic warmth, "Getting Closer" favors tension and drive, an approach that placed the band, at least momentarily, in conversation with the new wave and power-pop sounds dominating British radio at the turn of the decade. It is a reminder that McCartney, even a decade past the Beatles, remained attentive to where rock music was heading, and Juber's guitar work in particular gives the track a sharper, more aggressive edge than much of the band's earlier catalog.
A Solid Top 20 Showing
"Getting Closer" entered the Billboard Hot 100 on June 16, 1979, at number 64 and climbed quickly over the following weeks. The song reached its peak of number 20 during the week of July 28, 1979, completing a run of ten weeks on the chart. The rapid ascent, from 64 to 51 to 37 to 31 to 25 in successive weeks, shows a song that connected with radio programmers and listeners almost immediately, a strong result for a lead single introducing a reconfigured band and a somewhat tougher sound.
A Statement Single Doing Its Job
As the album's opening track and lead single, "Getting Closer" carried the weight of introducing Back to the Egg's slightly harder-edged direction to an audience accustomed to Wings' more melodic mid-decade hits. Its swift climb up the chart suggests that gambit largely paid off, giving the record label confidence that the reconfigured lineup could still deliver commercially even as the band's sound evolved. Critics at the time noted the album's rockier textures approvingly, with several singling out "Getting Closer" as evidence that McCartney had no intention of quietly settling into elder-statesman territory.
The Final Chapter of Wings
Back to the Egg would prove to be Wings' last studio album before the group dissolved in 1981, and "Getting Closer" stands as the opening note of that closing chapter. It captures McCartney refusing to coast on past glories, instead pushing his band toward a sharper, more contemporary sound even as the group's story was nearing its end. Play it loud and hear a songwriter still hungry to prove himself, more than a decade after his first world-changing run of hits.
"Getting Closer" — Wings's singular moment on the 1970s charts.
02 Song Meaning
The Meaning Behind Wings's "Getting Closer"
"Getting Closer" captures the dizzy, slightly disorienting rush of falling for someone, using the song's forward momentum as a musical analogue for the feeling it describes. The lyric circles around a narrator who senses a connection intensifying, watching the distance between himself and another person collapse, and the song's urgent tempo mirrors that acceleration rather than simply describing it from a distance.
Motion as Metaphor
Much of the song's power comes from how thoroughly its music embodies its subject. Rather than a leisurely ballad reflecting on romance after the fact, "Getting Closer" is built for propulsion, guitars and rhythm section pushing forward with an insistence that makes the listener feel the narrator's racing pulse. That alignment of form and content, a song about acceleration that itself accelerates, is a favorite trick of skilled pop songwriters, and McCartney deploys it with evident relish here.
Playful Ambiguity in the Lyric
Where many of McCartney's most famous love songs settle into warm sentimentality, "Getting Closer" keeps its emotional register more playful and slightly unresolved, its narrator caught somewhere between excitement and uncertainty about where the intensifying connection is heading. That ambiguity gives the song a nervous energy that suits its harder-driving arrangement, avoiding the easy comfort of a straightforward declaration of love in favor of something more kinetic and immediate.
A New Wave Energy in a Veteran's Hands
Arriving as new wave and post-punk reshaped British rock at the end of the 1970s, the song's urgency also reflects McCartney's awareness of a changing musical landscape. Without abandoning his gift for melody, he channeled contemporary rock's harder edges into a love song, proving that a songwriter who had already helped define an earlier era of pop could still adapt his instincts to a new one without losing what made his writing distinctive in the first place.
A Veteran Refusing to Repeat Himself
Part of what gives the song its meaning within McCartney's broader body of work is what it represents: an unwillingness to simply recycle the romantic warmth that had defined so many of his biggest hits. By choosing urgency and tension over comfort, he signaled, whether consciously or not, a refusal to let his songwriting calcify into a single, predictable mode, even as fans might have expected exactly that kind of comfortable repetition.
Why It Connected
For listeners in the summer of 1979, "Getting Closer" offered a jolt of kinetic energy from an artist whose name had become synonymous with more measured, melodic pop. Its blend of romantic urgency and rock drive gave the song crossover appeal, satisfying longtime McCartney fans while signaling that Wings could still hold its own against a rock landscape rapidly moving past the sounds that had defined the earlier part of the decade. That combination of familiarity and renewed edge helped push it into the Hot 100's upper tier.
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