Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder - Ebony And Ivory (7" Version) Vinyl

“Ebony and Ivory” is a 1982 number-one single by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. It was released on March 29 of that year. The song is featured on McCartney’s album Tug of War. A self-empowerment hit that struggles issues of racial equality, the song reached number one on both the UK and the US charts. In 2013, Billboard ranked the song as the 69th biggest hit of all-time on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.

At the simplest level, the song is about the ebony (black) and ivory (white) keys on a piano, but also deals with integration and racial harmony on a deeper, human level. The title was inspired by McCartney hearing Spike Milligan say “black notes, white notes, and you need to play the two to make harmony, folks!”. The figure of speech is much older. It was popularized by James Aggrey in the 1920s, inspiring the title of the pan-African journal The Keys, but was in use from at least the 1840s.

The B-side of the single, the song “Rainclouds”, is written by Paul McCartney and Denny Laine, though on early pressings of the single the song was credited only to McCartney.