Five songs that mock The Beatles
One of the most common questions asked throughout music is, “Were The Beatles overrated?” It’s a fair enough question; after all, the band is often praised for being not only the most important group ever to make music but also a contributing factor to everything we love about modern pop and contemporary. If you start at one band making music today and work backwards in terms of influence, you’ll wind up at The Beatles… or so they say.
Not everyone shares this opinion. Many think the band was overrated, received more praise than deserved and was downright average. As a result, many musicians and music lovers turn their noses up at the band, resenting the heaps of praise thrown onto the Fab Four and scorning every note they played.
While a lot of people are happy to simply dislike a band in private, others feel the need to express that distaste in what they deem a better representation of the art that said the band are butchering. Why not? After all, music is a form of expression. As a result, there are a surprising number of songs out there which were written with the intention of mocking the Beatles, both explicitly and indirectly.
Some of these songs are naturally better than others, but all of them achieve their aim of poking fun at the Fab Four and the legacy they left behind. Here are five of the most prominent tracks that mock The Beatles.
Songs that make fun of The Beatles:
Steely Dan – ‘Only a Fool Would Say That’
As was the case for a number of bands who made a name for themselves in the 1970s, Steely Dan grew up in the shadow that The Beatles cast. Even after their split, they were hailed as the best band in the world, and people couldn’t move away from the mounting pressure to be the next iteration of the Fab Four. When Donald Fagen and Walter Becker got together in 1971 to form Steely Dan, many people may have thought the second wave was well and truly here.
The band was very creative and didn’t let themselves be confined by any particular genre, style, or sound. Steely Dan exercised great creativity when it came to songwriting, and so they were compared to The Beatles in that aspect on occasion. While Steely Dan probably didn’t dislike the comparison, they had issues with The Beatles, particularly with John Lennon and how he portrayed himself. This is clearly seen on their track ‘Only a Fool Would Say That’.
The song shines a light on many of Lennon’s beliefs and reveals him to be a privileged hypocrite. “Our world become one, of salads and sun, only a fool would say that,” they write, painting Lennon as someone privileged enough to have hippie beliefs while a lot of working people aren’t in a position to do so. “You do his nine to five, drag yourself home half alive, and there on the screen, a man with a dream.”
The Damned – ‘Would You Be So Hot (If You Weren’t Dead)’
While it sounds brutal, many artists’ legacy has taken on new meaning because they passed away. We are always left pondering what might have become of someone’s career if they hadn’t died and continued making music. Would bands and artists fade into obscurity? Would our perception of them shift from that of the legend who was gone too soon? Many believe the best thing that a lot of artists did with their lives was stop living them.
The Damned seem to take this opinion with John Lennon in the song ‘Would You Be So Hot (If You Weren’t Dead)’. The title of the song is pretty self-explanatory, as the band ponder over the idea that John Lennon would not be remembered as the musical icon he is if he hadn’t died. They also state that a lot of John Lennon’s flaws were brushed over once he passed away, saying, “You’re a hypocrite, your cruel lack of empathy is long forgot, would you be so hot if you weren’t dead?”
The Clash – ‘London Calling’
The meaning of ‘London Calling’ is less about The Beatles and more a look at the end of the world. The band wrote the track as a warning for the end of days and intended on having it sound like somebody was reading the news. “He [Joe Strummer] did two or three drafts of lyrics that I think widened until the song became this warning about the doom of everyday life,” said Mick Jones, “Once we had most of the words down, I began creating music to fit the rhythm of the lyrics […] I wanted the urgency of a news report.”
In the song, the band seem to critique The Beatles as they refer to “Phoney Beatlemania.” While this isn’t a direct dig at the band, it is more mocking the obsession people had with them and a want to recreate that initial hype. Punk could be what they are referring to as “Phoney,” given the genre had reached its peak by the time The Clash wrote ‘London Calling’. As such, this song is more joking about the idea of The Beatles as opposed to the band itself.
John Lennon – ‘How Do You Sleep’
Many people think that diss tracks only became popular in the wake of rap music, but they were happening long before that, just in subtler ways. When Paul McCartney wrote the song ‘Too Many People’, John Lennon thought the track was written as a critique of himself and his fellow Beatles members. As such, Lennon decided to hit back on the track ‘How Do You Sleep’.
The song is full of clever wordplay that scathes McCartney, as Lennon says his best days are behind him. “Everything you done was yesterday, since you gone you’re just another day,” said Lennon, referring to the tracks ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Another Day’ to make his point. Lennon also admitted using McCartney as inspiration for some songs, saying, “I used my resentment against Paul to create a song. Sibling rivalry.”
Elvis Costello – ‘The Other Side of Summer’
This sentiment is similar on ‘The Other Side of Summer’ to that which Steely Dan vocalised in their track ‘Only a Fool Would Say That’. On it, Costello highlighted the hypocritical nature of some of John Lennon’s lyrics and how he talks about world peace and communism while raking in the millions from his success as The Beatles.
“Was it a millionaire who said, ‘Imagine no possessions?’” Sings Costello. When asked about the song and any supposed ongoing disputes with Lennon, he said he was a big fan of his but just took disdain towards the song ‘Imagine’. “’The Other Side of Summer’ is not a slap at John Lennon,” he said, “John Lennon wrote some wonderful songs, but ‘Imagine’, which has been so sanctified, was one of his worst. He didn’t think it all the way through.”
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