Description
A work of unparalleled candour and splendorous beauty, The Lyrics celebrates the creative life and the musical genius of Paul McCartney through 154 of his most meaningful songs.
From his early Liverpool days, through the historic decade of The Beatles, to Wings and his long solo career, The Lyrics pairs the definitive texts of 154 songs by Paul McCartney with first-person commentaries on his life and music. Spanning two alphabetically arranged volumes, these commentaries reveal how the songs came to be and the people who inspired them: his devoted parents, Mary and Jim; his songwriting partner, John Lennon; his “Golden Earth Girl”, Linda Eastman; his wife, Nancy McCartney; and even Queen Elizabeth II, amongst many others. Here are the origins of “Let It Be”, “Lovely Rita”, “Yesterday”, and “Mull of Kintyre”, as well as McCartney’s literary influences, including Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll and Alan Durband, his secondary school English teacher.
With images from McCartney’s personal archives—handwritten texts, paintings and photographs, hundreds previously unseen—The Lyrics, spanning sixty-four years, is the definitive literary and visual record of one of the greatest songwriters of all time.
Also By: Paul McCartney 
Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run
Hardback, 2025
Told in revelatory first person, this immersive account of Paul McCartney and Wings is the engrossing oral history of a band that came to define a generation.
1964: Eyes of the Storm
Hardback, 2023
Blackbird Singing: Poems and Lyrics, 1965–1999
Paperback, 2013
"McCartney writes as freely—and often as beautifully—as a blackbird sings....[He] is a genius with the common touch."—Stephen Logan, The Sunday Times [London]
Blackbird Singing: Poems and Lyrics, 1965–1999
Hardback, 2001
"McCartney writes as freely—and often as beautifully—as a blackbird sings....[He] is a genius with the common touch."—Stephen Logan, The Sunday Times [London]
1964: Eyes of the Storm
E Book
“Millions of eyes were suddenly upon us, creating a picture I will never forget.” —Paul McCartney
Also By: Paul Muldoon
The Waste Land
Hardback, 2013
The first edition of T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece reappears with a major introduction by Pulitzer Prize–winner Paul Muldoon.
