A Long and Winding Road: Songwriting advice from The Beatles
Songwriting can be a tricky business, and with the whole of recorded music available at the click of a button, it’s not uncommon to feel a bit daunted by the prospect of crafting something worthy of the canon. Thankfully, the songwriters of pop music’s golden age are also here to help. Throughout their careers, each member of The Beatles offered advice on how to craft a good song. We thought it’d be helpful to have all their words of wisdom in one place.
It’s comforting to think that at least two of the 20th century’s most revered songwriters struggled with their craft. John Lennon, George Harrison and Paul McCartney are responsible for some of the most beloved songs of the 1960s and ’70s. And yet, each of them went through periods of uncertainty and creative block. What made them so successful wasn’t some in-built ability to craft hit singles but a dedication to the craft and a respect for the process.
If you’re stuck on a song at the moment, these tips and tricks from John, Paul, Harrison and Ringo will be especially helpful. It’s easy to get bogged down in perfection, but it’s worth remembering that some of the greatest songs have been written as throwaways. Remember: it’s not you who decides what song’s your listeners will appreciate; that’s their job. Your job is to keep writing, experimenting, and searching for that perfect song.
John Lennon’s songwriting advice: Keep it tight
John Lennon was full of brilliant songwriting tips. He always said he found writing a rather torturous affair, which is perhaps why he tried to get songs written as quickly as possible. Like Noel Gallagher says, the best songs usually come from nowhere and are finished in about half an hour. Some might argue that editing a song for months on end often means snuffing out the original creative spark that made you start writing it in the first place.
Lennon put it best when advising fledgling songwriter George Harrison: “John gave me a handy tip,” he recalled. “He said, ‘Once you start to write a song, try to finish it straight away while you’re still in the same mood.’ Sometimes you go back to it and you’re in a whole different state of mind. So now, I do try to finish them straight away.”
Paul McCartney’s songwriting advice: Keep it loose
Like Lennon, Paul McCartney would argue that good songs are usually written in one fell swoop. McCartney suggests getting the skeleton of a full song – lyrics and all – written down before you decide to pack it in for the day. “Try and get to the end in one go, and it’s normally, then, pretty much written,” he says. “You may then look at it and go ‘oh that lines a bit ropey’. If you’re lucky, more often than not, you find that you’ve just sort of done it.”
Paul also advises against starting a writing session with a fixed idea of what you’re going to create. It might work were novelists, but plotting almost always leads to unexciting songwriting. “I don’t think about what I’m writing about, it spoils the magic for me,” McCartney once said. “So I don’t often come to writing a song with much of an idea; maybe a title, maybe just a phrase, or just a thought I’ve had.” “Usually I’ll sit down and I’ll start something I fancy doing, you know, either a key that I fancy playing around in – [on guitar] or on piano – and I see where I go to first, I just see where I go first, just see where it leads me. It’s how we always did it,” McCartney said, remembering his writing sessions with Lennon. “I would sit down with John and we just sort of follow this road.”
George Harrison’s songwriting advice: Keep going
Harrison was late to the songwriting party. John and Paul had already “carved out the empire” between them by the time he started getting interested in songcraft, meaning that he had to fight for his place at the table. Lennon and McCartney also had the added benefit of having written all their bad songs before The Beatles were famous. In contrast, George had to write his early attempts with the eyes of the world upon him. He wrote a lot of material that didn’t live up to The Beatles’ name, but – and this is a big but – he kept on writing regardless.
The best songwriting advice George could have offered actually came from Ira Glass, who pointed out that everyone who writes good work (in his case, literature) spends a period of time writing stuff that isn’t all that good. “Most everybody I know who does interesting creative work,” Glass once said, “they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste; they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be; they knew it fell short; it didn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. And the thing I would say is that: everybody goes through that, and if you’re going through it right now, you’ve got to know it’s totally normal, and the most important thing you can possibly do is a lot of work.”
Ringo Starr’s songwriting advice: Keep paying attention
Ringo may not have recieved the critical praise of John, Paul and George, but he was a worthy songwriter in his own right. Let’s not forget all those hit singles he released following The Beatles split. By that time, Ringo had already helped craft some of the group’s most beloved tracks, albeit in the studio. Still, he recognised how the dynamic between a group of musicians could influence a song even when it was pre-written. “There’s not a lot of takes on anything we did, because we were a band and we knew each other,” he told Linda Perry. “I always felt it was psychic… And it’s the magic of music. I loved it. I still love it when that happens.”
According to Ringo, the best songs often start with simple observations. Maybe it’s something you’ve read or heard, or been told. Whatever it might be, if it catches your attention, it’s probably important. Speaking to Billboard back in 2017, he explained how he put together his track ‘So Wrong For So Long” “What usually happens is with the writers I write with, one of us will have a line,” he began. “I usually have a whole list of lines, and then we sort of just think what we’re gonna do. The best [new track] to talk about is ‘So Wrong for So Long.’ Somebody said that to me in 2008, and I just thought, ‘that’s a great line,’ and finally turned it into a record, into a track.”
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