The one song Paul McCartney thought John Lennon couldn’t sing
There are hardly any other songwriters of this generation who could even hope to hold a candle to what John Lennon and Paul McCartney did together.
Throughout their entire career, their willingness to go against the grain and try things that the pop world had never seen before on every Beatles record is why their music still resonates years down the road. But just because they broke up didn’t mean that they weren’t going to get up to some more shenanigans in their solo careers as well.
Then again, it was going to take a few rough starts before everything started rolling like it used to. Lennon was already used to making some of the most warped records ever made when performing with Yoko Ono, and while McCartney was the tunesmith behind every great Beatles album, it’s not like everyone was citing McCartney as a major breakthrough of musical development or anything like that.
Both of them were ahead of their time in many respects, but when McCartney found his feet, it was a lot easier for him to fill stadiums again. He was a natural performer, and while Lennon did know how to entertain a crowd, he had always felt more comfortable going within himself and pulling out pieces of his own psyche than worrying about the kind of music the masses would like.
Was there some jealousy there? Probably, but it also comes down to the reason why each of them were making music. Macca had music move him in a way that not many other things could, so having Lennon there to tighten things up in the Fab Four was what made them inseparable half the time they were recording. But it’s not like McCartney couldn’t make catchy tunes on his own; they were just going to be a bit more saccharine than what Lennon was used to.
Lennon usually didn’t have any problem dismissing his partner’s tunes as ‘silly love songs’, but a lot of what McCartney created was about more than a jaunty little ditty. There are some show numbers like ‘You Gave Me the Answer’ every now and again, but there was also something like ‘I’m Carrying’ that took all of his greatest instincts and broke them down to their bare essentials on one acoustic guitar.
Although McCartney felt he captured something special on London Town with this particular track, he knew that Lennon could have never made this song if he tried, saying, “It’s been suggested that this song sounds Lennon-esque. It’s admit to it if it were, but to me it sounds more McCartney-esque: just the little voice. I couldn’t imagine John doing quite such a little voice. But you know, if it’s seen as Lennon-esque, that’s no great problem.”
While Lennon said the same thing about McCartney not giving him ‘Oh Darling’ to sing on Abbey Road, that shouldn’t discount the power of the song. Even George Harrison had to admit that McCartney wrote an absolute beauty with this tune, but maybe the reason why so many people hear Lennon in the song is because of how minimal it sounded compared to the rest of Wings’ material.
They had taken everything into bombastic territory on records like Venus and Mars, so hearing something this frail wouldn’t have been that out of place if it turned up on Plastic Ono Band. After all, McCartney and Lennon were on good terms when this song was being created, so who’s to say that they couldn’t have delivered a stunning record out of this if they had the time to work on it.
