McCartney pens letter about new album

Paul McCartney shed a bit of light on his new album, how he came up with its name and his mood when he was writing the new songs in a lengthy letter released on Monday.

The missive from the former Beatle outlines the 13 tracks on the new album, set for release June 5. It will be the debut offering from Hear Music, the fledgling label from Starbucks and Concord Music, as well as McCartney's first since leaving longtime home EMI/Capitol Records.

"I actually started this album, Memory Almost Full, before my last album, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard," he wrote, echoing statements he made in March.

"When I was just finishing up everything concerned with Chaos and had just got the Grammy nominations [2006], I realized I had this album to go back to and finish off."

The former Beatle described the album as "evocative, emotional, rocking," and said he was thinking of the past when writing the songs.

"In places its a very personal record and a lot of it is retrospective, drawing from memory, like memories from being a kid, from Liverpool and from summers gone," he wrote in the letter, which he signed "All the best."

The Grammy Award-winning artist alsorevealed that a music video for the opening track, Dance Tonight, has already been shot. Directed by filmmaker Michel Gondry, the video stars Natalie Portman and Mackenzie Crook.

The album title Memory Almost Full sprung to mind when McCartney was considering the final product, he said.

"It's a phrase that seemed to embrace modern life; in modern life our brains can get a bit overloaded. I realized I had also seen it come up on my phone a few times."

Although it is never mentioned, the former Beatle could have been hinting at his ongoing divorce proceedings with his second wife, Heather Mills McCartney, when he acknowledged that some might wonder if certain songs are about "specific subjects."

"I know people are going to look at some of the songs and interpret them in different ways, but this has always been the case," he said.

"I never really get to a point where I start thinking I'm going to write about specific subjects. Inevitably though, what I am thinking is going to find its way into what I'm doing."

Last fall, McCartney released his fourth classical album, Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart), an oratorio that he said was inspired by his first wife, Linda, who died of breast cancer in 1998.