If the title of this post is confusing, my original title was the simple, but efficient, "Paul McCartney Sucks"*.
Let me explain: I recently saw the trailer for the new movie "Yesterday", which has the interesting premise that one day everyone in the world has forgotten about the Beatles except for one guy (who then goes on to profit from this knowledge). Apart from the fact that I don't think Beatles' songs would go down as well in today's post-Beatles world, the absolute worst thing about this trailer (and possibly the whole movie) is that it had, I think, three Beatles songs, and they were all boring-ass Paul McCartney ones!
I would be much more interested in this movie if it instead featured clearly Awesome-John-Lennon-Beatles' songs like "Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite!", "I am the Walrus" and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)".
Now, I say all this knowing full well that each of the above songs, along with the songs in the trailer ("Yesterday", "Let it Be" and "Hey Jude"), are credited as being written by "Lennon-McCartney". But as everyone with any interest in the Beatles knows, this was just because John Lennon and Paul McCartney agreed very early on that they would credit all their songs that way, regardless of how much each of them contributed (or how much some sucked and some were good).
That said, a good starting point for working out which of the two had the greater input is to look at who sings them - chances are that John wrote the songs he sang, and Paul sang the ones he wrote (and George sang his songs, and Ringo was sometimes allowed near a microphone)**.
If you want to get more serious, this dude has gone to the effort of listing all the Beatles songs, with the singer and, presumably, the main composer.
But who has the time?!?! The best way to work out who wrote what is ... look at which ones are good!
And in case you haven't got the gist yet, the good ones are the John Lennon (or George Harrison) ones. John's songs are simply more interesting - he was clearly the rocker, and he also liked a bit of weird (that's not a Yoko Ono joke...but high five anyway, right?!?)
I thought this a few years ago when I "discovered" the Beatles' song "In My Life".
Listened to the Beatles' 'Rubber Soul' on the flight to Sydney and just discovered 'In my life' 50 years after everyone else. #IsANice— Riley J (@rilestar) June 4, 2015
As usual, I thought it was good, so I naturally assumed it was a John-Song. However, it turned out that apparently there was some controversy about the authorship. Paul McCartney apparently said that he had written the melody: "Those were the words John wrote, and I wrote the tune to it. That was a great one."
Well, science has come to the rescue, and by analysing all the words, notes and progressions used in Beatles songs, researchers can definitively conclude that "In My Life" is a Lennon song:
"it turns out Lennon wrote the whole thing. When you do the math by counting the little bits that are unique to the people, the probability that McCartney wrote it was .018 — that's essentially zero. In other words, this is pretty well definitive. Lennon wrote the music."I only relate this because it's funny.
Also Paul McCartney once ended up in the middle of a Nirvana reunion without knowing (and had to be told who the members of Nirvana were). That's just bad. You're bad, Paul McCartney.
So, yeah. I'm not going to see this movie.
And if you're at all wavering, there's another reason this movie is likely to be bad: there's a line that implies that Coldplay is good. This is incorrect.
You have been warned.
* I actually searched this term on Google recently and found this post - very entertaining!
** This even works for a song where they both sing different bits, like one of my faves: "A Day in the Life". Paul's bit is the worst (although it works for the song, probably thanks to John - high five!)
