A hit for both Paul and Stevie, “Ebony and Ivory” is a song about racial equality, using the black and white keys on a piano as a metaphor. Written exclusively by Paul, he decided it needed to be a duet:

I had a song called ‘Ebony and Ivory’ that I’d written, and I wanted to sing it with a black guy. And my first thought was Stevie.

And Stevie Wonder didn’t need much convincing:

I listened to the song, and I liked it very much. … I felt it was positive for everybody. I won’t say it demanded of people to reflect upon it, but it politely asks the people to reflect upon life in using the terms of music … this melting pot of many different people.

The song became a huge success, reaching number one on Billboard’s Top 100 and staying there for seven weeks in the spring of 1982, becoming Stevie’s longest charting single, and second-longest for Paul after “Hey Jude”.

Many critics found it cheesy, and it was subject to several parodies at the time, the most well-known by Saturday Night Live.

Nowadays, it’s still not highly-regarded, and was once voted the worst duet of all time. In 2004, Blender magazine ranked it #10 on their list of the worst songs of all time.

“Ebony and Ivory” was also banned in South Africa in 1985, after Stevie Wonder accepted his Oscar for Best Original Song with “I Just Called to Say I Love You” in “the name of Nelson Mandela”.