McCartney insists he has to start from scratch on every album
Paul McCartney has insisted he still doesn’t know how to be a songwriter.
Talking alongside the release of his new compilation album ‘Pure McCartney’, the singer said he feels like he’s starting from scratch every time he starts making a new album.
“There’s no point where you think ‘OK, now I can do it’, as it’s a little more fluid than that,” McCartney told NPR. “You talk to other musicians and it’s always the same. You go into the studio thinking ‘Oh, I know how to do this’, but then you realise you’re doing it all over again and starting from square one again. You’ve never got it down. Music is fluid, and I like that. I wouldn’t like to be blasé and think ‘I know how to do this.’”
McCartney has his own music school, LIPA, in Liverpool. He added: “I teach a songwriting class there. Nearly always, the first thing I tell students is ‘I don’t know how to do this. You’d think I do, but I don’t. It’s not one of those things you ever know how to do. I could tell you “Select the key, we’ll select a rhythm and now think of some great words.”’ That’s not really the answer.”
Circa Waves. The Wombats, All We Are, Telekinesis, Eugene McGuinness, Stealing Sheep and Dan Croll are among the graduates of LIPA. McCartney’s most recent album was ‘New’ in 2013.
McCartney’s interview comes after he became the first musician to use Facebook’s new 360-degree photo app, posting a gig picture from Argentina on his current ‘One On One’ tour.
