McCartney Vs. Lennon
Written by admin on December 15, 2009 – 11:47 am -It is the oldest Beatles discussion: “Lennon vs. McCartney” Which one was most essential to The Beatles music? It’s my opinion as a huge Beatles fan that the real answer is “both!” It may sound like a cop-out but I actually believe it’s the best answer.
I’m not one of those critics that goes out of his or her way to disparage the solo careers of Lennon and McCartney but I do think it’s obvious that they never reached the same level on their own as they did together with The Beatles I think that’s pretty good proof that there was something special about their songwriting partnership that allowed their work together to to reach a level that has rarely been reached by other songwriters.
A lot of The Beatles best work wasn’t the songs that Lennon or McCartney mostly wrote by themselves but were the songs that they worked on together. Many of their early hit singles such as “Please Please Me” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” were written together and some of their best work such as “A Day in the Life” were actually combinations of different bits that John & Paul wrote separately which were then added together to make a whole song.
Even when Lennon or McCartney would write a song mostly on their own, there would often still be important improvements added by the other.
Lennon would sometimes offer helpful advice on lyrics to McCartney. With “Hey Jude,” John told Paul to keep the “the movement you need is on your shoulder” bit that Paul actually wanted to drop from the song as he felt it was too weird. Lennon added the “it couldn’t get much worse” line to “Getting Better” which helped to offset the relentless positivity of the rest of the lyrics.
Paul McCartney added some incredible bass parts to John’s songs such as “Rain,” “Come Together,” and “Dear Prudence.” Without the great bass parts on these songs, they’d be nowhere near as great!
The big point being that both Lennon and McCartney were essential to making The Beatles music so fantastic.
Tags: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, The Beatles
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