Paul McCartney announces new lyrics book

Paul McCartney announced a new book of letters. The letter: 1956 to the present compiles 154 works by McCartney, from childhood compositions to the Beatles’ years, to Wings and his current solo albums. The book was edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Muldoon, who also wrote the introduction. See a trailer for the book below.

“I hope that what I wrote will show people something about my music and my life that they haven’t seen before,” McCartney said in press materials. “I tried to say something about how the music happens and what it means to me and I hope what it can mean for others as well.”

He added:

More often than I can count, I am asked if I would write an autobiography, but the time was never right. The only thing I’ve ever managed to do, whether at home or on the road, is to write new songs. I know that some people, when they reach a certain age, like to go to the diary to remember events of the day-to-day of the past, but I do not have these notebooks. What I have are my songs, hundreds of them, which I have learned that have almost the same purpose. And these songs span my entire life.

In addition to letters, the book includes never-before-seen photographs, letters, drafts and more. “Based on the conversations I had with Paul McCartney over a five-year period, these comments are as close to an autobiography as we can get,” said Muldoon in press materials. “His insights into his own artistic process confirm a notion that we had only guessed – that Paul McCartney is an important literary figure who builds on and extends the long tradition of English poetry.”

Read the Pitchfork Guide “These are the best Beatles books”.