Producer’s Notebook - “McCartney: A Life in Lyrics” with Sara McCrea
Producer’s Notebook - “McCartney: A Life in Lyrics” with Sara McCrea
"Writing and producing this felt like going on a treasure hunt with Paul McCartney’s memory as our terrain..."
A couple of weeks ago I published OGL’s first guest recommendation from audio producer Sara McCrea. (Contributors are paid for their work and supported by subscribers like you.) This week, Sara’s also the feature in my Producer’s Notebook series. Every couple of issues, I’ll also be posting Producer’s Notebook, an exclusive behind-the-scenes account from creators of the things I’m listening to here at OGL. You can check out the full Notebook archive here. There’s posts from audio legends Ariana Martinez, Shima Oliaee, Kaitlin Prest and more.
I'm an audio producer so I’m ok with repeating myself when I say Sara is an absolute treasure of a producer and gives me hope about the future of audio. Learn more about Sara on Twitter, Linkedin, and her forthcoming Substack. Ok, here we go:
Producer’s Notebook - Sara McCrea
Writing and producing “McCartney: A Life in Lyrics” felt like going on a treasure hunt with Paul McCartney’s memory as our terrain. Radio artist Pejk Malinovski and I drew from nearly one hundred hours of raw conversations between McCartney and Paul Muldoon that the two didn’t think would ever be heard by the public. (The tapes included doorbells and sirens and occasional sounds of the two Pauls eating lunch.) From that trove, we arranged and assembled two dozen cohesive narratives. Each episode takes listeners from the lyrics of a particular song to the broader personal, cultural, and historical influences on McCartney’s writing. Rather than an artist biography that itemizes and mythologizes the life of a solitary genius, this project seeks to focus on the delight and mystery of the creative process itself, the collaborations and unconscious churnings that filter into the lyrics. That’s my hope, at least.
This was a series built from an archive, and so there was not really pre-production. iIt was all an exercise in creative post-production: patchworking episodes from various snippets from across the several years of recordings and stitching them together with host narration.
Since Muldoon is a poet, Pejk and I wanted to bring a literary angle to the lyrical analysis. We integrated archival tape and sonic references to keep the conversations immersive and engaging. This allowed for us to get creative with the writing and sound design. We imagined a James Bond trailer with McCartney as a special agent in the episode “Live and Let Die”. In season 2, we recreated a BBC radio drama of a French absurdist play for the episode “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”. In some cases, the constraints of fair use presented opportunities for fun.
Sara’s Favorite Episode: Jenny Wren
It’s hard to pick a favorite episode, but I’m partial to the bird-centric “Jenny Wren / Blackbird,” which mounts to a sweet moment of the two Pauls listening to a wren chirping outside Muldoon’s window. When I found that exchange in the raw tape, it felt like striking gold. It’s a moment of serendipity we never would have gotten in a studio. This project was a wild joy to work on—both creatively challenging and creatively fulfilling. I’m proud of what our team created, and I’m excited for listeners to hear the rest of season 2.
Thank you so much, Sara! P.S. I did listen to the Jenny Wren episode and wow that was a lot of bird ambi!
Sara McCrea is a writer, audio producer, and researcher from Boulder, CO, currently living in Brooklyn, NY. She has recently helped produce podcasts and original audiobooks for companies including Pushkin Industries, Audible, and American Public Media. In her spare time she takes criminally long walks in Prospect Park and listens to many podcasts while doing so. Follow Sara on Twitter | Linkedin | And (forthcoming) Substack
Listen to the series on Apple Podcasts here: