John Lennon - Paul McCartney - 1960s - The Beatles

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The difference between John Lennon and Paul McCartney through their most hated songs

Sun 13 April 2025 14:30, UK

John Lennon and Paul McCartney were always the perfect polar opposites to each other. Both of them were joined at the hip most of the time they were making every Beatles song, but the biggest idiosyncrasies about their sound were also the main things that drove the other one up the wall half the time. And when looking at both of their most hated songs, it’s easier to understand what made both of them tick from a musical perspective.

Before the band had even become famous, though, ‘The Nerk Twins’ always had a common love of rock and roll. They had grown up in an era where nothing mattered more than Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly, and while they did learn a handful of jazz chords along the way when honing their live act, they were always interested in being a standard rock and roll outfit than branching out into anything off-the-wall.

But before he even picked up a guitar, Lennon was the consummate artist. He wanted to make sure that everything he did had some meaning that could last far beyond a typical three-minute song. And while that did lead to something engaging when he made ‘Revolution 9’ on The White Album, no one could blame Macca for not understanding what he was getting at. The piece itself is a decent way of depicting what a revolution might sound like, but putting it on an album next to tunes like ‘Dear Prudence’ severely kneecapped both the piece and the rest of the record.

Then again, McCartney wasn’t exempt from a few moments when things could go off the rails as well. He was always known as the one making sugary pop tunes that had more than a little bit of fluff to them, and ‘Ob La Di Ob La Da’ was already an annoying byproduct of the first side of the same record. If we’re talking about his most hated song, though, it would ultimately go to ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’.

While Abbey Road is the band’s most celebrated work for a reason, this adorable ode to bloody murder was a chore for every member of the band, to the point where they had to play it incessantly before getting the final take. But that might be the first major difference between how Lennon and McCartney thought.

Whereas Lennon was more interested in making something artistic and capturing a moment, McCartney wanted to make something that was as perfect as it could be. As far as his partner was concerned, beating something into the ground like that ruins its appeal, and there’s nothing worse than working on a song and then getting bored with it midway through its production.

It’s also slightly hilarious that both ‘Revolution 9’ and ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ suffer from the same problem. Each of them is on an album that many people would consider among the greatest records ever released, and the key problem with both of them is that they bring down the rest of the songs around them, almost like a dirge for anyone trying to get through each album in one sitting.

However, they are brought down in many different ways. ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ feels like a piece of sugary fluff that comes after Lennon’s ‘Come Together’ and George Harrison’s ‘Something’, and when ‘Revolution 9’ finishes, you almost need a tune like ‘Good Night’ to help lull you back down to sleep after going through the hellish nightmare that had come before.

Their problems are mirror images of each other in many respects, but that’s always how Lennon and McCartney presented themselves. Macca wanted to make tunes that were intent on making people happy for those few minutes they were on the turntable, and Lennon wanted to shake the listener and get them to think, but somewhere in the middle was always where the genius came in.