Hundreds of celebrities were asked Lennon or McCartney over the last decade. Here are their answers.

Playing by the rules with a one word answer: McCartney.

Not playing by the rules... they clearly needed each other. McCartney was the most musically talented of the Beatles but had a natural tendency for sentimentality as he seems to be one of those naturally happy people. Lennon was essentially an awful human being who needed someone like McCartney to avoid descending into pure cynicism. Both had a wide range of musical influences and both could be quite experimental when the mood struck, although McCartney's was decidedly more poppish, while Lennon angled toward the Yoko... and ultimately this is why I swing McCartney. His stuff ends up succeeding far more often than Lennon, who is frequently dreadful beyond all measure. Mind you, a great Lennon song has a haunting quality which McCartney can never achieve, but I'll go with the pure joy of McCartney 90% of the time.

My opinion is exactly the same, except you have to switch "McCartney" with "Lennon," and vice versa.

Apart from that small nitpick, I am right there with you, brother.

In the Beatles, I lean toward the McCartney songs... but in their solo work, I lean Lennon.

Overall, McCartney.

It's a tough one for me. My one word answer is Lennon. I identify a little more with McCartney.

So you're saying that Lennon isn't really a songwriter?

ABSURD ON ITS FACE

I want to be careful about this, because I don't want to sound like Yoko Ono who has expressed the opinion that her late husband was the ONLY talented member of the Beatles. That's clearly b.s. However, I would say that post-Beatles, John Lennon was way ahead of the pack. The other Beatles---who are now all solo members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame---were helped in their subsequent induction by the fact that they WERE Beatles. I think that if the Men in Black came and wiped out the memories of what John Lennon did before 1970, he would still be inducted into the Hall of Fame because of his solo career. "Live and Let Die" isn't in the same ballpark as "Happy Xmas (War is over)" or "Imagine."

There's a good discussion to be had about the individual strengths and weaknesses of the Beatles are. I think the discussion is closed on who was the most talented.

Even though all the non-Harrison and Starr songs are credited "Lennon and McCartney", I don't think that means they worked equally on all of them. If Paul is singing, then it's (mostly) a McCartney song. Similarly, if John is singing, it's (mostly) a Lennon song. During the time when "The Beatles" (a.k.a. "The White Album") was recorded, many of the songs were recorded by the Beatles separately without anybody else. They (pardon the pun) came [back] together to work on "Abbey Road", which was their final album.

So no, it really isn't that absurd on its face.

Steven Clubb may reserve the right to be spectacularly wrong, but I seize it as my birthright.

I once read that McCartney was capable of both genius and crap, but could not tell the difference between the two.I don't know if that's true, but I laughed anyways.

.....................................................................................................Or something like that

Playing by the rules - Lennon

Otherwise, Harrison, then Lennon, then McCartney, then Starr.

I like McCartney's post-Beatles work better than Lennon's post-Beatles work.

But I choose Lennon based on the Beatles work.

But I think McCartney is a genius. Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby . . . the list would stretch on and on so I won't try.

McCartney gets one demerit for Hey Jude, and loses to Lennon by a razor thin margin.

The B Side of Hey Jude was Revolution.

The Frog Chorus is all McCartney would need for the Hall of Fame.

The post-Beatles work is why I think Lennon needed McCartney more than the other way around. Lennon is the person who thought it was a good idea to let Yoko have half the album or let her screech in the background when he had a chance to play with his musical idol.



McCartney would likely have been a wonderful pop song writer no matter what. Lennon supplied that touch of bitter that kept it from being too sweet.

wut

Those kind of decisions are nothing to do with Lennon lacking a well-honed ability to craft great pop music, and everything to do with the fact that he was, from 1968 until he died, in love with (and deferential to) a woman who was far, far less talented than he was. His sharing the microphone with Ono was not because Lennon lacked the proper aesthetic sensibilities; it's because at this point in his life, he often ignored them.

Given your other post about how highly you regard Lennon, I think you misread what I said.

First off, I was putting those words in Hanzo's mouth as a goof on an earlier discussion on IMWAN about Lee/Kirby.

But irrespective of that, the sentence "Lennon isn't really a songwriter" IS an absurd statement. I don't see how it could be seen as anything but.

Generally speaking, using Lennon and McCartney's post-Beatles work as a way of judging what they did while in the Beatles is problematic.. Because:

1.) Both of them had peaked as songwriters by the time the Beatles split up.
2.) They brought out the best in each other, so when separate from each other, their songwriting diminished exponentially.
3.) The Beatles broke up in 1970, which automatically places all of the post-Beatles work in a decade wherein pop music was mostly -- MOSTLY, mind you -- terrible.

That said, they were both geniuses.

They also were both great pop singers. Interesting (though not surprising) how when someone says to choose between Lennon and McCartney, most of us go immediately to trying to evaluate which of them was the better songwriter: Not the better singer, or instrumentalist, or performer, etc.

(McCartney was the more accomplished musician. Lennon was the more unorthodox writer and arguably the better lyricist -- certainly the one more inclined to linguistic invention. Both were great singers, although I don't like where McCartney started to take his singing style post-White Album.)

They were all equally fab.

Does speak to his dubious taste which slipped into the music from time to time.

And I find it harder and harder to shake the obvious hypocrisy of his work as time goes on. As one person noted, the video of Imagine does quite a lot to undermine the whole message of the song, as it's kind of hard to imagine Lennon wanted to live in a world with no possessions when he lived in that house with that piano. Too often it sounds like he's standing in judgment of others for his own sins, which he occasionally cops to, such as when he admitted that the anti-Paul song "How Do You Sleep At Night" turned out to be about himself, which he only realized after the fact. Even his love for Yoko often seemed like him trying to convince the rest of the world of her worth, rather than a sincere examination of his own feelings.

One of the things I really enjoy about McCartney's Beatles work is his relationship with the actress who name I'm blanking on right now, fueled a number of great songs which capture genuine moments in a rocky relationship. When he gets into his Silly Love Song period, it's fueled by what is clearly his all-consuming love of Linda, of which there is no doubt. At his best, he captures those little moments while lesser pop artists go for the Big Moments... and craft something too obviously artificial. McCartney's work just feels like an extension of who he is.