McCartney versus Lennon

The usual rap against Paul McCartney is that his songwriting lacks depth. They are just pleasant confections, Tin Pan Alley tunes, no more. He suffers in comparison, in particular, to his songwriting partner, John Lennon. McCartney was shallow, Lennon was deep.

This is actually, it seems to me, the reverse of the truth. The idea originates largely with Lennon, who often made this public complaint against McCartney. McCartney, by contrast, tends to say in public how much he admired Lennon, how intelligent John was.

Hmm—who really sounds shallow here?

It is true that McCartney wrote a lot of songs with no deep meaning. Just bouncy tunes. “Paperback Writer.” “O-Bla-Di-O-Bla-Da,” or however you spell it. “Silly Love Songs.” “Rocky Raccoon.” “When I'm Sixty-four.” “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time.” “Birthday.” “Back in the USSR.”

But this does not mean he was incapable of stringing a guitar with his own guts. What about “Blackbird,” “Long and Winding Road,” “Let It Be,” “Got to Get You into My Life,” “Mull of Kintyre”? These are actually deeper than anything Lennon wrote.

Lennon tends to go for empty sloganeering: “Give Peace a Chance.” “All You Need is Love.” “Happiness is a Warm Gun.” “Mind Games.” "Instant Karma." Superficially this sounds profound, but it takes no thought. He usually even cops the key phrase from somewhere else. You might say he is the stupid man's smart person. When he tries to go deep—most famously with “Imagine”—he comes up with really puerile stuff. Deep down, he is shallow.

Lennon can/could indeed compose powerful and deep songs. But only when he concentrated on the personal and did not try to get philosophical: “Girl.” “In My Life.”

McCartney gets a bad rap in part because he is so good at beauty; because he is such a fine musical craftsman. There is a Protestant iconoclastic prejudice permeating English-speaking culture that beauty is superficial and trivial. It is not. McCartney's melodies are of immense value in themselves. They speak from his heart, often, and they touch our own. There is no moral nor intellectual value to ugliness.

Another reason McCartney gets a bad rap is that his thinking is so Christian. People don't want to hear that. He has claimed the “Mother Mary” who is appealed to in “Let It Be” is his own mother. Bollocks. He is not praying to his mother, and Lennon has mocked the song for its Christianity. McCartney has used this as a cover, because otherwise he would face a backlash from the pagans.

And it is perverse as well to turn up one's nose at celebrating the simple things in life, as McCartney's “trivial” songs often do. Getting married, having children. There is immense value in ordinary people and their ordinary lives. If God did not love them, why did he make so many of them? The folks in “Penny Lane,” or “When I'm Sixty-Four,” or “Eleanor Rigby,” or “O-Bla-Di, O-Bla-Da,” are the same folks Jesus called the “salt of the earth.”

Even when McCartney is shallow, he is deep.