5 Songwriting Tips From Paul McCartney's 'The Lyrics'
No one would be foolish enough to turn down songwriting advice from Paul McCartney. The former Beatle has a plethora of hits to his name—both in the band’s discography and his own. He has so many songwriting credits, in fact, that his book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present (which contains his thoughts on his entire discography) had to be split up into two volumes. While most of the book consists of behind-the-scenes stories from the writing of each of McCartney’s songs, there are also moments of hard-earned wisdom throughout. Find five McCartney tips you need to apply to your own songwriting, below.
1. Being self-taught has its merits
Though The Beatles were a highly revered force, you can’t chalk up their success to formal training. The group was little more than four boys who loved the blues, getting together, and creating their brand of rock magic. According to McCartney, he feels that informality actually helped the group in the long run.
“With the Beatles, we were always operating on the cusp between being conscious of how a ‘refrain’ contributed to a song and basically having no idea what we were doing,” McCartney writes in The Lyrics. “One of the things I always thought was the secret of the Beatles was that our music was self-taught. We weren’t able to read music or write it down, so we just made it up. There’s a certain joy that comes into your stuff if you didn’t [try] to make it happen.”
Source: Alex Hopper/americansongwriter.com
