Paul McCartney Announces Massive Lyric Book 'The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present'

Watch a trailer for the Beatle's upcoming song memoir now

BY Brock ThiessenPublished Feb 24, 2021

While Beatles legend Paul McCartney has yet to give us a proper autobiography, he is now helping make up for that with a new lyrics book that will reflect on his many decades in music.

The upcoming book is called The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, and it will arrive as a two-volume, 960-page set on November 2.

"More often than I can count, I've been asked if I would write an autobiography, but the time has never been right. The one thing I've always managed to do, whether at home or on the road, is to write new songs," McCartney said in a statement. "I know that some people, when they get to a certain age, like to go to a diary to recall day-to-day events from the past, but I have no such notebooks. What I do have are my songs, hundreds of them, which I've learned serve much the same purpose. And these songs span my entire life."

The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present will put more than 150 McCartney songs under the microscope in alphabetical order, touching on everything from his Beatles work, to his material with Wings to his solo output and even his childhood songs.

Down below, you can watch a trailer, soundtracked by his Flaming Pie ballad "Calico Skies."

Described as a "self-portrait in 154 songs," each will be "presented with this is a treasure trove of material from McCartney's personal archive — drafts, letters, photographs — never seen before, which make this also a unique visual record of one of the greatest songwriters of all time," publishers Liveright/W.W. Norton explained.

McCartney added: "I hope that what I've written will show people something about my songs and my life that they haven't seen before. I've tried to say something about how the music happens and what it means to me and I hope what it may mean to others, too."

The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present was edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and poet Paul Muldoon.

Pre-order The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, and watch the trailer below.

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