Paul Simon picks the best songwriter in The Beatles
A person’s favourite Beatle is an incredibly telling fact. Fans settle into camps, each following their respective leaders and each willing to fight to the death that theirs is, in fact, the best. There are the Paul McCarney worshippers who love his timeless reliability. The John Lennon mavericks who gun for the wild card. The appreciators of the band’s quiet secret weapon, George Harrison, and then those who like to stand against it all and attempt to claim that Ringo Starr is their favourite. But where does Paul Simon land?
Simon’s answer feels predictable yet utterly understandable. When asked to pick his all-time favourite songwriters, he chose one Beatle for the list. “I’d put Gershwin, Berlin and Hank Williams. I’d probably put Paul McCartney in there, too,” he said.
The two share a lot of likeness. In their respective bands, both were attempting to hold things down. Especially in the later, rocky years, both the songwriters felt like grounding forces. While Art Garfunkel was wandering off to make movies and generally becoming more and more disengaged with their duo, Simon stayed back and wrote their timelessly beloved final record, Bridge over Troubled Water. It’s a similar story of McCartney, who, throughout the band’s tumultuous Get Back sessions, always seemed to be the one trying to make it work and unite the members again to keep the record on track.
Their songwriting styles always feel similar, both balancing incredibly solid foundations with experimentation. Throughout their discography, both artists have delivered a long list of enduring classics. Simon has ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’, ‘Cecilia’ and ‘The Sound of Silence’. McCartney has ‘Let It Be’, ‘Yesterday’, ‘Hey Jude’ and many, many more hits, giving the band their most number ones. But while those songs feel like the building blocks modern music is made from, they also pushed the boundaries of their artistry, providing time and time again that they’d keep evolving.
But while McCartney is his favourite, a second Beatle comes in a solid second place in his rankings. “Then, in the second tier, Lennon is there,” he said. For Lennon fanatics, that ordering would send them into a fury. There’s no denying that Lennon also is an exceptional, world-altering songwriter. So many of his compositions totally changed the shape and sound of music as, both in the Beatles and in his solo work, Lennon messed with the rock and roll rule book time and time again.
However, when considering Simon’s style and origins, his preference for McCartney over Lennon is easy to understand. He came from a folk background, embedded in the 1960s scene where his nature imagery, tight harmonies and melodies that were akin to traditional folk ballads made his made. Meanwhile, Lennon was a rock and roller, and as the years went on, he delved further and further into the more experimental and strange corners of that world. By the time the band split, Lennon was busy making performance art more than he was making the kind of classic hits he’d started out with. Meanwhile, McCartney went off and made Ram, an album with undeniable folkish influences that feel far more related to Simon’s own field of inspiration and interests.
Lennon didn’t do himself any favours in Simon’s good books either, as he famously called him a “singing dwarf”. So perhaps his choice is also a little personal.
