Last.FM To Settle John Vs. Paul Debate?
By BrainFace on Jul 30, 2009 in Features
I just came up with an idea of one way to settle (I’m joking of course, I don’t expect anything to ever settle this debate) the age old John Lennon Vs. Paul McCartney debate about who contributed more to The Beatles music. Or at least who wrote more of their most popular songs.
I’ve been taking an album by album look at who contributed more to each album. So far I’ve got through just Please Please Me & With The Beatles but I plan on keeping up with until it’s finished. But this is a different idea, an overall look of who contributed more to The Beatles entire career.
So what is this idea? I’ll use the top 50 most played Beatles songs list (from the past 6 months) at Last.FM to come up with a points system which awards the principle songwriter for each song the credit for that song.
The most played song is worth 100 points, the 2nd most played 98, all the way down to the 50th which is worth 2 points. I’m using even numbers so that when both John & Paul contributed significantly to the writing of a particular song, the credit can be split equally without getting into fractions.
Without further ado, here it goes… (In parenthesis will be the running total: John-Paul)
01. “Let It Be” – Paul 100. (0-100)
02. “Come Together” – John 98. (98-100)
03. “Yesterday” – Paul 96. (98-196)
04. “Eleanor Rigby” – Paul 94. (98-290)
05. “All You Need Is Love” – John 92. (190-290)
06. “Hey Jude” – Paul 90. (190-380)
07. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” – John 88. (278-380)
08. “Help!” – John 86. (364-380)
09. “Something” – George 84. (George 84)
10. “Here Comes the Sun” – George 82. (George 166)
11. “Yellow Submarine” – Paul 80. (364-460)
12. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” – George 78. (George 244)
13. “Get Back” – Paul 76. (364-536)
14. “Penny Lane” – Paul 74. (364-610)
15. “A Day in the Life” – John + Paul 36 each. (400-646)
16. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” – John/Paul 35 each. (435-681)
17. “Strawberry Fields Forever” – John 68. (503-681)
18. “Can’t Buy Me Love” – Paul 66. (503-747)
19. “Love Me Do” – Paul 64. (503-811)
20. “A Hard Day’s Night” – John 62. (565-811)
21. “Ticket to Ride” – John 60. (625-811)
22. “Because” – John 58. (683-811)
23. “Blackbird” – Paul 56. (683-867)
24. “I Am The Walrus” – John 54. (737-867)
25. “Across The Universe” – John 52. (789-867)
26. “Octopus’s Garden” – Ringo 50. (Ringo 50!)
27. “With a Little Help From My Friends” – John/Paul 24. (813-881)
28. “Lady Madonna” – Paul 46. (813-927)
29. “She Loves You” – John/Paul 22 each. (855-949)
30. “Eight Days a Week” – John /Paul 21 each. (876-970)
31. “Oh! Darling” – Paul 40. (876-1010)
32. “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” – Paul 38. (876-1048)
33. “Glass Onion” – John 36. (912-1048)
34. “In My Life” – John 34. (946-1048)
35. “Happiness is a Warm Gun” – John 32. (978-1048.)
36. “Sgt. Pepper’s…” – Paul 30. (978-1078.)
37. “The Long and Winding Road” – Paul 28. (978-1106)
38. “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” – Paul 26. (978-1132)
39. “Dear Prudence” – John 24. (1002-1132)
40. “Michelle” – Paul 22. (1002-1154)
41. “Day Tripper” – John 20. (1022-1154)
42. “Getting Better” – Paul 18. (1022-1172)
43. “Girl” – John 16. (1038-1172)
44. “We Can Work It Out” – John/Paul 7 each. (1045-1179)
45. “I Feel Fine” – John 12. (1057-1179)
46. “Golden Slumbers” – Paul 10. (1057-1189)
47. “Back in the USSR” – Paul 8. (1057-1197)
48. “Fixing a Hole” – Paul 6. (1057-1203)
49. “You Never Give Me Your Money” – Paul 4. (1057-1207)
50. “Helter Skelter” – Paul 2. (1057-1209)
Final Results: Paul 1209 points, John 1057 points, George 244 points, & Ringo 50 points.
Paul wrote 23 of the 50 top songs, John wrote 17, John & Paul wrote 6 together, George wrote 3, and Ringo wrote 1.
So when it comes to who wrote more of The Beatles most popular songs, it looks like Paul is the winner. How about that? I bet you a lot of people who listen to more Paul songs than John songs on Last.FM would claim (without hesitation) that John is their favorite Beatle.
My point here isn’t that Paul was better than John or even that he contributed more. I think that “most popular” is definitely not the same as best. For example, “Love Me Do” is one of their weaker songs and it’s ranked #19 while an awesome song like “Dear Prudence” is only #39.
My point is that many people automatically assume that John is the Beatle they like most because of his mystique more than because they actually prefer his songs over Paul’s. Many people simply do not give Paul the credit he’s due for writing many of The Beatles greatest songs.
Note: I am aware that splitting “A Day in the Life” up the middle isn’t quite fair as it’s definitely more of a John song than a Paul song, but there were other “judgments” that went in John’s favor: “We Can Work It Out” is a bit more of a Paul song than a John, but it was split evenly. I gave John total credit for “Day Tripper” even though Paul did contribute to the verses. I also gave John total credit for “Ticket to Ride” even though Paul has claimed they actually wrote it together.
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Also, George deserves some props for having 3 of the top 12.
BrainFace | Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
While a good premise, the weighing is off. While Come Together is clearly the more popular song, it’s nowhere near twelve times as popular than Back in the USSR.
Last.fm has already weighed the numbers for you via their listening statistics — all you have to do is round the odd figures to an even number and allocate them to John, Paul, or both.
comrade | Jul 31, 2009 | Reply
comrade – You make an excellent point. Just using the amount of listeners for each song as the “point value” would have made more sense than the method I used.
Using the listener data as the “points” would also allow this idea to be used for more songs very easily… Top 100? Top 200! But I think I’ll let this rest…
BrainFace | Jul 31, 2009 | Reply
Reading this now I’m thinking that another important point is that Paul contributed a lot to many of the songs that John wrote. For example take away Paul’s bass lines from “Come Together” and “Dear Prudence” and those songs aren’t nearly as great.
Marvin Marks | Oct 1, 2010 | Reply
no don’t let it rest…get to work. We wanna know
MARCUS | Oct 6, 2010 | Reply
@ Marvin Marks. Yeah, great basslines, but don’t forget John’s contributions to Paul’s songs: the piano on “Oh! Darling” and “Obladi-Oblada”, the lead guitar on “Get back”, to name a few. Not to mention George’s and Ringo’s instrumental contributions, of course, they were a group, and were supposed to work like that (but this is about John vs Paul after all).
Also the list is missing songs like “Julia”, “Please please me”, “If I fell”, “This boy”, “Yer blues”, “Nowhere man”, “Norwegian wood” or “You’ve got to hide your love away”, all popular Lennon compositions.
6olden5lumber | Feb 12, 2011 | Reply
I’m surprised that those songs, particularly “Nowhere Man,” “Norwegian Wood” and “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” aren’t among the 50 most listened to Beatles songs on Last.FM too …
Think about how amazing The Beatles catalog is that songs as great as those have even a chance of not being in the top 50 most listened to!
(But as far as my own personal taste I think those three would all be in my top 50)
Marvin Marks | Feb 12, 2011 | Reply
Out of curiosity I just went over to Last.FM to check the current rankings of those three Lennon penned songs:
“Norwegian Wood” #36
“Nowhere Man” #56
“You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away” #65
As you can see “Norwegian Wood” is now in the top 50 (at #36) looking at the list in this post compared to the list today there has actually been quite a bit of moving around.
I think you really get the best idea of the insane depth of The Beatles catalog when you look at the songs ranked after #50 actually… These are fantastic songs and they aren’t even in the top 50!
And how about past #100? Well lemme see: Here are some of my favorites that aren’t currently in the top 100 on Last.FM …
#102 “Doctor Robert”
#104 “Think for Yourself”
#107 “Birthday”
#109 “Sexy Sadie”
#113 “No Reply”
#115 “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”
#122 “Cry Baby Cry”
#123 “Yer Blues”
#131 “Mother Nature’s Son”
#132 “Rocky Raccoon”
#139 “I’ll Follow the Sun”
#140 “Things We Said Today”
#146 “I’m a Loser”
#157 “I’ll Cry Instead”
#159 “Blue Jay Way”
#163 “Hey Bulldog”
#194 “Rain”
#196 “This Boy”
#198 “It’s All Too Much”
#212 “Free as a Bird”
#223 “Real Love”
~~~
You may be thinking that The Beatles didn’t even record 223 songs – but you have to also consider The Anthology versions and the “Love” mash-ups and misspellings. Some songs are on the list multiple times because of different titles.
Marvin Marks | Feb 12, 2011 | Reply
Yep, quite a collection of tremendous songs, I know! (“Real Love” #223, unvelievable). I just mentioned some, but with a big etc implied. John’s “Tomorrow never knows”, “The ballad of John and Yoko”, “I should have known better”, “You can’t do that”, “Ask me why”, “Yes it is”, etc. Most of them B-sides, and “Tomorrow” not even a single.
George’s brilliant “Within you without you”, “The inner light”, “Old brown shoe”.
Paul’s very popular “Drive my car”, “I saw her standing there”, “And I love her”…
So IT IS fair to say that John and Paul wrote about the SAME, in quantity and quality, of The Beatles’ catalog (with very important Harrisongs, obviously). It shouldn’t be a VS (even though it’s an interesting debate, but unfair sometimes, because it becomes a matter of tastes), they each had their strengths and weaknesses, but BOTH were pivotal to the Beatles, and geniuses on their own (I don’t believe that what they did post Beatles doesn’t match up to what they did while in the group, as some say, with some exceptions).
6olden5lumber | Feb 12, 2011 | Reply
Well I would say the “vs” thing is a bit of a silly game really – in reality what you say is true — they both made incredibly important contributions to The Beatles music… that said the silly game can still be fun sometimes.
I think BrainFace’s point with this post was that Paul doesn’t get the respect that he deserves from a lot of people (mostly “casual fans” who don’t realize the extent of McCartney’s contributions.)
Marvin Marks | Feb 12, 2011 | Reply
john had a radical side and he wanted songs that made big impact.he wasn’t interested in simple lala songs.but i have to have both.you can’t listen to hard songs all the time.and you can’t listen to simple songs all day either.so to paul and john…thank you brothers!
donnie | May 1, 2011 | Reply
The war can go on for ages and the debate will never be settled. The truth is that Paul and John needed each other and alone they would have made only a passing grade in music. The magic of the beatles is that these two very complex and incredibly talented individuals were able to work together if only for a little while. I say that only because in my opinion their best “together music” was inevitably about to come in the 70′s just as they broke up. Pity!!
Eralides E. Cabrera | May 22, 2011 | Reply
“happiness is a warm gun”, “because” and “strawberry fields forever” are the most impressive ones in my opinion.. they clearly aren’t mainstream songs (beside strawberry fields).. both are great but john is much more special and his solo career was much more of a success than paul’s – he wrote “imagine” – more famous than any beatles’ song including “let it be” and “yesterday”. another hits – “jealous guy”, “woman”, “working class hero” can be compared to beatles #1 singles…
my point is that during the beatles period john was trying different stuff (not mainstream, but more complicated and psychedelic tunes) but he also prove that he has the same ability to write mainstream as paul did.
omer | Jun 28, 2011 | Reply