May 15, 1982, Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney started a seven week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with 'Ebony And Ivory'. The song is featured on McCartney's album Tug of War and produced George Martin. McCartney originally conceived the idea for this song after watching English comedian Spike Milligan playing on a TV show a segregated piano, on which the white and black keys were kept apart, in order to demonstrate how one couldn't work without the other. McCartney and Wonder recorded the duet together, on the island of Montserrat in the West Indies. However, due to conflicting work schedules, both shot their parts for the song's music video separately. Ebony and Ivory was banned for a while in South Africa by the South African Broadcasting Corporation during the Apartheid era, making it the only solo McCartney song to receive such a ban (music by The Beatles was also banned in South Africa for a while). The official reason for the song's ban was because McCartney's duet partner, Stevie Wonder, accepted his 1984 Academy Award for Best Original Song in the name of Nelson Mandela. Following the song's huge chart success, it was derided as "saccharine" and was later named as the tenth worst song of all time by Blender magazine. On October 2007, it was named the worst duet in history by BBC 6 Music listeners. (In September 2010, Matthew Wilkening of AOL Radio ranked the song at No.9 on the list of the 100 Worst Songs Ever, stating that the song was "done much better by Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy. In 1982, Saturday Night Live did a skit mocking this song where Joe Piscopo (playing Frank Sinatra) sings it with alternate lyrics along with Eddie Murphy (portraying Wonder): I am dark and you are light, you are blind as a bat and I have sight. For McCartney, the song's run atop the chart was the longest of any of his post-Beatles works, and second longest career-wise (behind "Hey Jude" with The Beatles); for Wonder, it was his longest-running chart-topper. It marked the first time that any single released by any member of the Beatles hit the Billboard R&B chart. It was McCartney's record 28th song to hit number one on the Billboard 100.
