Paul McCartney said his list of unfinished and unreleased songs was “too long” and that he was in the process of channeling John Lennon to help with a track that was stumping him.

He recently announced the release of McCartney III, his third completely solo album, which will be released a week later than originally planned, on Dec. 18, as a result of “unforeseeable” production issues.

In September, McCartney said Lennon still influenced his creative process; in a recent interview with Uncut, he cited a new example. “I’m working on one at the moment that was going one way, but I didn’t like the lyric,” he noted, adding that he had told himself: “No, this is not happening, mate.”

“This would have been the point where John and I would have said, ‘You know what? Let’s have a cup of tea and try and rethink this. We collaborated for so long, I think, ‘Okay, what would he think of this? What would be say now?’ We’d both agree that this new song I’m talking about is going nowhere. So instead of sitting around, we’d destroy it and remake it. I started that process yesterday in the studio. I took the vocal off it and decided to write a new vocal. I think it’s heading in a better direction now.”

Discussing his backlog of potential releases, McCartney said: “ The problem with iPhones is that you can [record] an idea … and you think, ‘That’s good, I’ll finish this later.’ Then you realize you’ve got 2,000 of these ideas on your phone! ‘Oh, God! Am I ever going to get round to them?’”

While the coronavirus lockdown presented the chance to “get round to a lot of them” as he tracked McCartney III, he added that he has "a list of songs that I started but didn’t actually finish or release.” Asked how long the list was, McCartney replied: “Too long! It’s songs I’ve written on holiday, songs from before COVID where I was in the studio, right after Egypt Station, but I didn’t need to come up with an album … and also songs I liked that got sidelined.”

 

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