The Beatles are still keeping us hopping and encouraging us to spend all our hard earned cash on them 60 years later!
The paperback edition of The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present by Paul McCartney is due for release in four days on Tuesday, November 7, 2023. In the meantime, I was sent an ARC (advanced readers copy) for perusal and review. Let me make one thing clear though…I never got/bought a copy of the original book, so I can’t really make a lot of comparisons between the two editions except maybe pointing out the obvious or from what I can gather from the preview on Amazon about the original set.
The Lyrics – Hardcover (2021)
Originally, The Lyrics was released in November 2021 as a 2 volume hardcover in a slip-jacket with a price tag of $100. Its page count is a whopping 960 pages, and measured in at 8.5″ x 3.1″ x 10.8″ and weighing 8 lbs. And…it’s gorgeous.
The paperback is just 624 pages and is compacted down to 6.1″ x 1.6″ x 9.1″ and weighs just 2 lbs. And…it’s only $27 at Amazon.
Except for the obvious differences mentioned above, the only other minute detail is a “Note to Reader” that appears in the beginning in the hardcover but is regulated to the back before the index in the paperback edition.
For those that haven’t yet obtained a copy of The Lyrics, it begins with Paul dedicating the book to ” my wife Nancy, and my mum and dad, Mary and Jim,” Not quite sure why the kids were left out, but whatever.
That’s followed by a Table of Contents showing us that Paul chose to organize all 161 songs alphabetically instead of chronologically. I think I would have preferred chronological, but alphabetical has its pluses which I’ll get to in a minute. Next up is a ten page Foreword by Paul which I believe is about as close to an autobiography as we’ll ever get. In fact, he pretty much says that at the get go and explains that the book of lyrics is his life story. Next up is the Introduction by Paul Muldoon – the man behind the interviewing and editing of McCartney’s words to form this book. Then…what we’ve all been waiting for…the stories behind every song with pictures!
I anticipate that the paperback is going to be just as popular, if not more so than the beautiful hardcover edition. The deluxe boxed edition is nice and all…and don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have one, but…only if it was signed by Paul himself. Whereas, the paperback is more along my style when it comes to the Beatles and having reference books. The Lyrics is going to settle a lot of debates among Beatles fans when it comes to the origins of many of the Fab Fours songs. And personally, I grew tired of arguing with the best of them a long time ago. This book is going to be a very welcome edition to my bookcase and most likely many other shelves as well this holiday season just for the very purpose of having it handy to grab when you hear a song and think, “I wonder what inspired Paul to write this?”.
And for that reason…
I rate this book, 4 out of 4 Beetles!
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