Paul McCartney Vs. John Lennon

Please Please Me & The White Album Box Set Packaging

It’s the age old Beatles argument: “Lennon vs. McCartney” Which one was most important to their music? It’s my opinion as an enormous Beatles fan that the real answer is “both!” It may sound like a cop-out but I actually think it’s true.

While I’m not one of those people that likes to talk about how awful Lennon & McCartney were during their solo careers (because I don’t think that’s true at all) I do think it’s obvious that they never reached the same amazing level by themselves as they did together as The Beatles I think that’s pretty good evidence that there was something special about their partnership that allowed their work together to to reach a level that has rarely been reached by other songwriters.

Many of The Beatles best tunes were those that John and Paul wrote together. Most of their early hits such as “Please Please Me” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” were written as a team and some of their greatest songs 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 John or Paul would write songs mostly on their own, there would often still be important improvements added by the other.

For example with McCartney’s songs like “Hey Jude” and “Getting Better” John would give Paul very good lyrical advice. John told Paul to keep a lyric in the song “Hey Jude” that Paul felt wasn’t clear enough. With “Getting Better” John added the “it couldn’t get much worse” bit which helped to add a bit of weight to the positive lyrics of the rest of the song.

Paul McCartney added some amazing bass parts to John’s songs such as “Dear Prudence,” “Rain,” & “Come Together.” Without the great bass parts on these songs, they’d be nowhere near as great!

The essential point that I’m trying to get across is that both Lennon & McCartney were necessary ingredients of what made The Beatles so great.