Paul McCartney announces new lyric book

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

“I hope what I’ve written will show people something about my songs and my life that they’ve never seen before,” McCartney said in press materials. “I tried to say something about the way the music is played and what it means to me and I hope what it can mean to others too.”

He added:

More times than I can count I’ve been asked if I would write an autobiography, but the time was never right. The only thing I’ve ever managed to do, whether it’s at home or on the road, is write new songs. I know that some people, when they reach a certain age, like to go to a journal to remember the daily events of the past, but I don’t have such notebooks. What I have are my songs, hundreds of them, which I learned for the same purpose. And these songs cover my whole life.

In addition to the lyrics, the book includes photographs, letters, drafts and more never before seen. “Based on conversations I had with Paul McCartney over a five-year period, these comments are as close to an autobiography as we could ever come to,” Muldoon said in press documents. “His glimpses of his own artistic process confirm a notion we had only guessed at – that Paul McCartney is a major literary figure who draws inspiration from and extends the long tradition of poetry in English.

Read Pitchfork’s guide “These are the best Beatles books”.