Paul McCartney, who recently turned 81, is keeping himself busy and is entering new territories. He has announced a new podcast titled McCartney: A Life In Lyrics, which will take listeners behind some of his best-known songs. Set to debut on September 20, the podcast with Irish poet Paul Muldoon is a 12-hour selection of conversations that took place over a period of time.
The legendary Beatle and the poet collaborated on the book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, which was published in November 2021. The idea for the podcast came from McCartney’s production team. When work on the book was on, Muldoon would often turn up at McCartney’s house and turn on the phone to record conversations between the two of them. Once the book materialised, they realised there were hours of candid conversations about times past, which includes the music of The Beatles, Wings and much more.
Each episode will put the spotlight on a different McCartney song, going back to his early days in the Beatles and later to his solo material. “When we listened back to the tapes, we realised there was something very special happening in these conversations. It was McCartney unfiltered,” Muldoon says in the prologue episode.
The podcast’s executive producer Justin Richmond had a tough time going through the conversations because of its high archival value. Speaking to The Verge, he touched upon a part of the recording that appeared interesting to him. “This is kind of a goofy one, but at one point in the series, you discover that Paul is a dog person and John Lennon is a cat person. And I don’t think there’s anything else that best describes the difference between these two people and the way they relate to each other in life and in art,” Richmond said.
The book covers 154 songs but the podcast wants to tell the story in a manner that connects the songs to life events. Some tough decisions had to be made, one of which involves leaving out Ebony and Ivory. McCartney talking about Stevie Wonder is great but him doing that for 20-30 minutes was more than what a podcast episode can accommodate.
One of the most interesting episodes may turn out to be the one around Maxwell’s Silver Hammer because it’s one of the most overlooked Beatles songs though people from the 1960s feel it has a lot of depth.
The first season of the podcast will capture stories behind songs such as Eleanor Rigby, Back in the USSR, Let It Be, Penny Lane, Live and Let Die and Helter Skelter. Season two will launch in February 2024. Meanwhile, the paperback edition of The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present will be published on November 7. The new edition of the book will include extra commentary that didn’t make it into the original edition about Bluebird, Day Tripper, English Tea, Every Night, Hello Goodbye, Magical Mystery Tour and Step Inside Love.
The first season of the podcast will be available to stream at once with a Pushkin+ membership or fans can hear it — one episode every week — via iHeartRadio, Apple, Spotify and other podcast platforms.
“I wanted to become a person who wrote songs and wanted to be someone whose life was in music,” McCartney says in a trailer for the podcast.
It will be a special year for Beatles fans as the group’s “final” song is expected to be released with some help from artificial intelligence.
In case you want to hear McCartney speak about his songs on another podcast, try Paul McCartney: Inside the Songs, which is presented by BBC Radio 4.