Paul McCartney has revealed the list of the 154 songs featured in his forthcoming book The Lyrics, publishing November 2 2021. That list is now available to view.
This career-spanning selection also includes a set of lyrics to an unrecorded Beatles song: “Tell Me Who He Is.” During the writing of The Lyrics, the hand-written lyrics were discovered in one of Paul’s notebooks, believed to date back to the early 1960s.
Showcasing many further treasures from Paul’s archive, The Lyrics includes hand written lyric sheets, unseen personal photographs, drafts, and drawings. Each song is accompanied by a commentary by Paul McCartney giving a unique insight into his creative process.
To accompany the new book, the British Library has announced it will host a free display entitled Paul McCartney: The Lyrics (November 5 2021 – March 13 2022), which will celebrate the songwriter and performer and feature previously unseen lyrics from his personal archive. Handwritten lyrics and photographs spanning McCartney’s career will reveal the process and people behind some of the most famous songs of all time, from his earliest compositions through legendary decades of The Beatles and Wings to the present.
“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. 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” – Paul McCartney, Foreward to The Lyrics
Earlier this month, McCartney shared a behind the scenes visual for his latest video, “Find My Way” with Beck. The cinematic piece finds McCartney being transported back in time, traversing the maze-like halls of a hotel as a young man. The BTS look offers an intimate look on how the team accomplished the feat of moving Paul back in time.
