John Lennon’s Songwriting Evolution

John Lennon’s traditional high level of commercial songwriting success waned in the second half of the Beatles 8 year career span. I’ll hypothesize later in this article about possible causes, but the facts are the facts. From 1966 through 1970, based on the US Billboard, John was the primary writer on only 2 No1 songs (i.e. “All You Need Is Love”, ”Come Together”) compared to Paul’s 7 No1’s songs. John did crack the the Top 10 three times including “Strawberry Fields Forever” (8), “Nowhere Man” (3) and “The Ballad of John and Yoko” (8).

First, a little related history. John and Paul agreed to share their songwriting credits in 1962 and did so until the band broke up in 1970. Together, according to Far Out Magazine (UK), they penned roughly 165 songs of the 189 total original songs credited to the Beatles. The remaining balance was credited mostly to George Harrison. It is believed that roughly only 65 of the songs credited to Lennon/McCartney were truly created collaboratively face-to-face. The other 100 songs were largely written individually but were shared with the other writer for input and potential changes which occurred frequently. This short video describes the Lennon/McCartney process.