Announced yesterday out of the blue a new Wings “best of” compilation to accompany the forthcoming book, Wings – The Story of a Band on the Run (and possibly the new documentary film, Man On The Run):

WINGS – The Definitive Collection will contain purely Wings songs (in other words no Paul McCartney solo, or Paul and Linda McCartney releases) and it will come in the shape of a 3LP set, a 2CD set, a 1CD, and there’ll be a separate, exclusive Blu-Ray Audio Disc with Atmos mixes for the first time.

This 3LP set will also be offered as a McCartney Official Store limited edition coloured vinyl exclusive:

If you don’t want to pay US$20.00 for a lithograph and a sticker sheet then you can get a standard 3LP set without the trinkets:

And there’s a single LP on black vinyl containing 12 tracks in all:

The first “exclusive”, “limited edition” coloured vinyl release of the 1LP has been announced. It’ll be available on green vinyl through Target stores in the U.S., in FNAC stores in France, also from jpc in Germany and Austria, and at JB Hi Fi in Australia. In other words, it looks like one retailer per territory will get the “exclusive”. Will this be the first of many colour and cover art variations like we saw with McCartney III?

If CD is more your thing then the 2CD set has all the tracks from the 3LP sets, including the poster:

While the 1CD replicates the 1LP track running order:

The McCartney Store and the SuperDeluxeEdition site are offering an exclusive Blu-ray Audio disc which is likely to be the format that most excites McCartney fans. As site owner Paul Sinclair writes, “For the first time, tracks are available in Dolby Atmos on a physical product. The mixes are by Giles Martin and Steve Orchard. 14 of them have been available in recent times on streaming, but 17 of them are unheard in this format, including tracks from un-reissued latter albums, such as ‘With A Little Luck’, ‘London Town’ and ‘I’ve Had Enough’ (from 1978’s London Town) and ‘Getting Closer’ and ‘Arrow Through Me’ (from 1979’s Back to the Egg). 7 out of the 10 tracks from the US version of Band on the Run also feature on this compilation.

Blu-ray Audio audio streams summary:

• Dolby Atmos Mix (48/24)
• 5.1 Surround Mix (48/24)
• Hi-Res Stereo Mixes (96/24)

This blu-ray audio contains 32 tracks and is presented as a ‘softpack’ with a 16-page booklet:

The  WINGS – The Definitive Collection packaging has been designed by Paul and Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell of the famous Hipgnosis design studio. The two have worked together extensively in the past, not only on album artwork but also the art direction for McCartney tours. The first thing that hit us though was that front cover with the word WINGS populated with a photo montage of the band, and the inner sleeve replicating that was a little bit derivative. Some other band from the past used a very similar idea way back when…..

For the full news story and background on this release see the official Paul McCartney page.

WINGS – The Definitive Collection is out on November 7.