22 new McCartney songs for musical

Paul McCartney has written 22 new songs for the musical It’s A Wonderful Life. He said that in an interview with American actor Alan Alda. McCartney assumes that not all songs will be used. Producer Bill Kenwright invited Macca to write the music for the play, which is based on the film classic of the same name from the nineteen forties. The script comes from Lee Hall, known from the movie/musical Billy Elliot, among others.

I got the script and, I think I was on an airplane, reading it and I thought ‘I can see this, I love this, wow!’ And he (Lee Hall) put in a dummy lyric, with a little disclaimer saying ‘I’ve put in some dummy lyrics, but feel free to change them’. So, I liked it, and I just left it and I thought ‘you know what? I’m getting intrigued by this’. And then one day when I was on holiday in the Summer, I had a piano, I just had the script and those dummy lyrics, and I thought ‘Okay, I am gonna throw something at this, just for a laugh. If it’s terrible, no one will know, only me’. So I did, I threw something and recorded it on my phone and I thought, it’s not bad, it’s not bad. And the lyrics actually weren’t that dummy, I kind of liked where he was going with it. So I send it to them (Hall and Kenwright) and they went ‘Ooooh, you’ve nailed it! The hardest number in a musical is the opening number, and this is it! We can see it!’ and everything. So I was very encouraged and started writing some more. So now I’ve got 22 songs… that’s probably too many.”

When asked how far McCartney, Kenwright and Hall are with the project, Paul answered with a concise ‘quite far’. Initially, the musical was announced for next fall, but in another recent interview, McCartney hinted at a release early next year, with a premiere in London.

You can listen here to the complete interview:

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André Homan

André Homan is a Dutch writer and journalist.

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