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Paul McCartney, the iconic Beatles band member, epic solo artist and trumpeter player (it’s true!) has put out a tome of a memoir. Inside the creator recounts his more than eight decades of songwriting.
The lyrical autobiography, “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present” chronicles over 150 of McCartney’s songs, spanning from the first tunes he wrote while growing up in his childhood home in Liverpool to the beloved masterpieces he wrote for The Beatles, to contemporary hits from his solo career. The two-volume book set, which charts his career in both alphabetical and chronological order, is already a No. 1 best-seller on Amazon since coming out today.
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“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.”
McCartney released a trailer for the book alongside the book’s announcement in February. Over a rendition of his ballad “Calico Skies,” he describes the collection as a “self-portrait in 154 songs,” adding: “I hope that what I’ve written will show people something about my songs and my life that haven’t been seen before.”
The collection was edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and poet Paul Muldoon, who got to know the British singer over a five-year period. Muldoon, who also penned the introduction said in a statement, “These commentaries are as close to an autobiography as we may ever come.”
‘The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present’
Courtesy of Amazon