Sir Paul McCartney

On Monday, the former Beatles star, 79, announced the dozens of songs that will be featured in his upcoming “self-portrait” book,The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present.

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Paul McCartney

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The Beatles

The collection — which is arranged alphabetically rather than chronologically — “establishes definitive texts of the songs' lyrics for the first time and describes the circumstances in which they were written, the people and places that inspired them, and what he thinks of them now,” according to a release.

When the book was announced, it came along with atrailerfor the collection, which is set to McCartney’s ballad “Calico Skies.”

Paul Muldoon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who edited the book,told theGuardianthatThe Lyricsis based on several conversations he had had with McCartney over five years, where the pair discussed the background to his songs “in a very intensive way.”

‘More often than I can count, I’ve been asked if I would write an autobiography, but the time has never been right," McCartney said in aforeword to the book. “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.”

See the full 154-song list featured in the bookhere.

McCartney’s book,The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, will make its debut November 2 and is available forpreordernow.

source: people.com