The two songs John Lennon wishes he had written: “A damn fine piece of work”
There’s not much John Lennon hasn’t put his hand to in his career. In the 1960s and 1970s, he had a crack at creating pretty much everything between blues rock and outright psychedelia. His work has been the blueprint for many icons that came after and his name is at the tip of every tongue whenever the question ‘if you could have written one song, which would it be?’ is asked.
While a singular artist in his own right, the early mop-topped days of Lennon’s career often saw him grinning ear to ear when referencing some of the artists who he regarded as influences. Be it the bonafide blues rock of Elvis Presley or the tender lyricism of Bob Dylan, The Beatles stood on the shoulders of giants as they cemented their legacy.
After building on what they had established, John Lennon and Paul McCartney thrust The Beatles into the world of wild experimentalism, dabbling with several genres across their records to merge them into the contemporary. During the 1970s, no genre made more of a sudden impact than that of disco.
Passing through the glittering doors of New York’s Studio 54, the disco subculture rose, much to the dismay of traditional rockers and seemingly threatened everything conventional its fans held dear. While the history books have proven it was a meaningful movement, at the time, it was deemed a wildly uncool movement to those within the classic rock sphere, and to openly admire it was an admission of your bad taste.
But the forward thinker he was, Lennon swam against that stream and engaged with the genre. So much so that ‘Rock You Baby’ by George McCrae is noted as one of the few songs he wishes he had written. In 1975, he told Spin: “I’d give my eyetooth to have written that. I am too literal to write ‘Rock Your Baby’. I wish I could. I’m too intellectual, even though I’m not really an intellectual.”
I think the general consensus would argue that Lennon is in fact, an intellectual and he was arguably at his absolute best in The Beatles, when leaning in to that. As their discography wore on through the ‘60s, he explored the esoteric and created the hallmarks of his songwriting style, twisting romantic norms and expanding upon his own imagination.
Meanwhile, his songwriting counterpart McCartney was mastering the art of sweet love songs, bringing the necessary more buoyant counterpoint to Lennon’s work in the band. They were a pairing who complimented each other perfectly, and such was the level of their individual genius that they didn’t grow resentful of each other’s songs until much later in the band.
But that being said, there was a particular McCartney song that Lennon begrudgingly gave full credit to McCartney for. “‘All My Loving’ is Paul, I regret to say,” he told Playboy in 1980. “Because it’s a damn fine piece of work. But I play a pretty mean guitar in back”.
While Lennon would have more than his fair share of time in the sun, much of his acclaim can be attributed to the more nuanced sound of the late ‘60s Beatles. Whereas ‘All My Loving’ was one of the pivotal early moments for the band, driving widespread interest in America, with Macca’s rosy-cheeked romantic optimism thrusting them forward as the world’s newest sweethearts.
