The book received mostly positive reviews.
David Hepworth of
The Guardian wrote that "Whereas the other Beatles wrote fitfully after the group broke up, Paul kept getting out his pencil, taking his guitar into a quiet corner and writing yet another song, less on the basis of inspiration than the feeling that it was a muscle he must use or lose. It's this more than 10,000 hours spent setting himself the eternal puzzle of getting from the beginning of a song to its end that enabled him to dazzle
Dustin Hoffman by writing "
Picasso's Last Words (Drink to Me)" in front of him. 'Can you write a song about anything?' Hoffman asked. Yes, Dustin, he clearly can." He was also impressed by the people mentioned by McCartney: "The index is a reminder of the fact that, having been actively famous for 60 years, Paul McCartney has met everyone he’s had a mind to meet. Having learned from
Craig Brown's recent book that
Malcolm Muggeridge came to see the Beatles play in Hamburg, I no longer bat an eyelid at the revelation that in 1964 Paul rocked up unannounced at the door of
Bertrand Russell."
David Hajdu of
The New York Times noted that "McCartney shows how deeply he is steeped in literary history and how much his output as a songwriter has in common with the works of the likes of
Dickens and
Shakespeare." He concludes: "Aaaah … we realize:
Paul really is a word man, the more literary and cerebral Beatle."
David Kirby of
The Washington Post praised the book and said that "Reading
The Lyrics is like standing in a master chef’s kitchen as he prepares a dish, adding a dash of this and a spoonful of that and talking to us so winningly that we don’t realize till later that he has withheld an ingredient, one that, because he was so deeply engaged himself, he didn’t know he was withholding."
Blake Morrison wrote in a review for the
Guardian that the stories recalled by McCartney are unusual and entertaining: Morrison concluded in his review that "Stripped of the music, the words on the page can look random or banal. But at best he's a wonderfully versatile lyricist: troubadour, comedian, elegist, social commentator, pasticheur. And anyone with even half an interest in the Beatles will find
The Lyrics fascinating." The book has been translated into eight different languages: German (translator Conny Lösch), Dutch (translator Robert Neugarten), Spanish, Portuguese, French (translators Hélène Borraz, Raphaël Meltz and Louise Moaty), Finnish, Swedish and Italian (translators Franco Zanetti and Luca Perasi). == Podcast ==