The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present

What's in the Book: 154 Songs, Two Volumes, 960 Pages

The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present was published on November 2, 2021, by Liveright in the US and Allen Lane in the UK, as a two-volume, 960-page slipcased set with a US list price of $100. It presents the lyrics of 154 songs from across Paul McCartney's life, from his teenage beginnings through the Beatles, Wings and his solo career, each paired with Paul's own commentary on how the song came to be.

The songs are arranged alphabetically rather than chronologically. That sounds like a filing decision, but it changes how the book reads: a 1965 Beatles track can sit next to a solo song written decades later, and the reader starts to notice the recurring material on their own, the same Liverpool streets, the same relatives, the same habit of turning an overheard phrase into a chorus. It suits browsing far better than a straight run from 1956 onwards would.

The text grew out of conversations between Paul and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish poet Paul Muldoon, held over roughly five years. Muldoon edited the book and wrote its introduction, and Paul supplied a foreword. Those same conversations later became the podcast McCartney: A Life in Lyrics, released through 2023 and 2024, which is a good way to sample the book's tone before buying.

The '1956' in the title marks the start of Paul's songwriting life. He turned 14 that June, his mother Mary died on 31 October, and Paul has long dated his first song, 'I Lost My Little Girl', to that period. The loss runs quietly through many of the commentaries and gives the book an emotional centre that a plain catalogue of songs would lack. The 'to the Present' half of the title matters just as much: solo songs get the same space and care as the Beatles entries, so the book is as useful on the 1980s and 2000s as it is on 1965.

Writing and Research: Paul, in His Own Words

Paul had turned down requests to write an autobiography many times over the years, and he has said that he never kept a diary. Instead, he points to his songs as the record of his life, and The Lyrics treats them that way. The commentaries range from a paragraph to several pages, mixing songwriting craft, family history, Liverpool memories and stories about the people he met along the way.

Many of the best-known stories are here in Paul's own telling: 'Yesterday' starting life with the placeholder words 'Scrambled eggs', 'Ticket to Ride' carrying a memory of a trip he and John made to Ryde on the Isle of Wight, 'Blackbird' written in response to the American civil rights struggle, and 'Picasso's Last Words (Drink to Me)' written on the spot for Dustin Hoffman in Jamaica in 1973. 'Let It Be' is tied to the dream in which his mother appeared to him, and 'Eleanor Rigby' to the elderly people he visited and ran errands for as a boy in Liverpool.

On research: this is not a book of footnotes, session dates or cross-checked chronology. When Paul's memory differs from the documented record, for example on exactly when a song was started or who contributed which line with John, the book gives Paul's version and moves on. Serious fans should read it alongside reference works, which is why our Research score is half a point lower than the others. As a primary source, though, it cannot be replaced: nobody else can tell you what Paul thinks a line means.

Photos and Design: The Archive on the Page

The design is what justifies the price. Each song is accompanied by material from Paul's personal archive: handwritten lyric sheets, drafts, letters, previously unseen photographs and paintings. Seeing Paul's own handwriting, with crossings-out and alternate lines, adds a layer that no typeset lyric can match. For fans who care about how songs are built, those manuscript pages are worth the purchase on their own.

The two volumes are large, heavy hardbacks housed together in a slipcase. They are coffee-table books in size, but they are meant to be read, not just displayed, and the photo reproduction is sharp enough to make out the corrections on the lyric sheets.

If you want Paul's photographs on their own, his later book 1964: Eyes of the Storm (2023) is devoted to them; our review of 1964: Eyes of the Storm covers that one. The two books sit well together on a shelf, one centred on words and one on images.

Value: Is $100 Worth It?

At a $100 list price, The Lyrics is an expensive book, but it is rarely sold at full price. Online retailers have discounted it often since publication, and secondhand copies in good condition are easy to find. Given the page count, the production quality and the archive material, we consider it fair value even at list, and a bargain when discounted.

For comparison, the official The Beatles: Get Back book from the same year listed at $60 for 240 pages built largely around transcripts and photographs. The Lyrics gives four times the pages for less than twice the money, with far more original writing, and it holds up to repeat reading in a way most large-format music books do not.

The one practical drawback is size. This is not a book you can carry on a commute. If you mostly read on the move, the podcast is the portable way to get many of the same stories. At home, give the set a flat, sturdy shelf; the volumes are heavy enough to bow a thin one over time.

How to Read It: A Suggested Approach

Do not try to read it cover to cover in alphabetical order on the first pass. Start with the songs you know best, then the ones you have always wondered about. A good starting trio is 'Eleanor Rigby', 'Let It Be' and 'Blackbird'; from there, follow Paul's references to family, Liverpool and John into other entries.

Keep a playlist of the songs open as you read. The commentaries often mention particular chords, lines or production choices, and hearing the song straight after reading about it makes the details stick. The same approach works with his newest album; our review of The Boys of Dungeon Lane covers the 2026 record that returns to many of the Liverpool memories Paul writes about here.

Finally, read Paul Muldoon's introduction. It is short, and it frames Paul's songwriting within the long tradition of English-language poetry in a way that changes how you read the rest of the book.

Where It Fits Among McCartney Books

The Lyrics is best understood next to the other major McCartney books rather than instead of them. Barry Miles's Many Years From Now (1997) was written with Paul's cooperation and built on long interviews with him, so it covers similar ground in prose form, with more on the London avant-garde of the 1960s and on the business side of the Beatles. Philip Norman's Paul McCartney: The Life (2016) is the fullest independent biography, written with Paul's tacit approval but not under his control.

For the early years, the benchmark is Mark Lewisohn's Tune In (2013), which documents the Liverpool and Hamburg period with a rigour no memoir can match. Reading Lewisohn's account of the Quarrymen next to Paul's commentary on his earliest songs is instructive: the facts and the feelings rarely contradict each other, but they emphasise very different things. Our Tune In review covers which edition to buy.

What The Lyrics adds that none of these books can is the view from inside the song: why a particular rhyme was chosen, what a line meant to Paul at the time, and how his view of it has changed since. That makes it the natural companion to the records themselves, and the book most likely to send you back to the albums.

Who It's For

The Lyrics works for most kinds of McCartney reader, but it is especially rewarding for songwriters and musicians, because Paul is generous about craft: how he builds melodies, where rhymes come from, and why certain songs arrived in an afternoon while others took years to finish.

It is less suited to readers looking for a critical, independent biography. For that, pair it with the titles in our list of the best books about Paul McCartney.

As a gift for a fan who already owns the records, it is hard to beat. For a newer fan, pair it with a hits collection so they can hear each song as they read about it. For a longtime collector, the manuscript pages are the draw: comparing drafts with the finished lyrics is where the book repays years of dipping in.