Who do you think was the better songwriter of the Beatles? | Page 2 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Jello said:

 He even wrote the top two most covered songs in history. 

I was under the impression that Something was the second most covered song in history.

Anyway, for me, it's John. Doubtless McCartney is amongst the best composers (and songwriters) of the 20th century, but John turned music into songs better than he did.

There were four songs recorded by the Beatles that ended up on Anthology 3 and were released solo by a Beatle- Paul's Junk and Teddy Boy , and George's Not Guilty and All Things Must Pass . Personally, I prefer all four Anthology versions, even though John clearly wasn't taking Paul's songs seriously and George didn't think anybody was putting enough effort into Not Guilty . But anyway, I think these songs improved due to John saying “no, that's not right, do it like this”. Paul cites John telling him to increase the tempo of Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da, keep the “the movement you need is on your shoulders” line in Hey Jude , and others. John knew the tempo of Help ! had to be increased, and he knew what lines would work in songs like Taxman and Piggies . The decision to attempt to combine the two very different parts of Strawberry Fields Forever was a bold one, and it worked despite all the odds.

The best example of John as a songmaker as well as writer is Happiness Is A Warm Gun . There are four or five different sections to it, most of them written seperately, plus the removed “Yoko Ono, no, Yoko Ono, yes”, and they all have different meters and timbres and tempos that had to fit together. Yes, the other Beatles helped (Ringo in particular sounds excellent here… listen to the drum fill before “she's well acquianted with…”), but it was John's baby, and he was responsible for fitting it together. Similarly, his compositions of I'm Stepping Out and Real Love that somebody posted a video of a few weeks ago, where he created two songs from a series of fragments.

In the same way that Paul's “serious” side is often brushed aside, John's emotional side is too. I think, whilst Paul was writing songs overflowing with emotion like Let It Be or She's Leaving Home that covered up his “serious” side to a degree (though Eleanor Rigby is probably the best known “serious” Beatles song), they also covered up John's emotional songs, which seemed to hold back a little more than Paul's. The exception is In My Life … written (musically) primarily by George Martin. But then there's something like Nowhere Man – rise here, fall there, hold that note, increase the tempo, pause… it's like Gnik's example of Penny Lane , he knew what he had to do to create the effect he wanted.

Come on now, that seems a bit over the top. John wasn’t a bass player and so he plays a boring bass part on a boring song. Go listen to Rocky Raccoon , the bass isn’t exactly fantastic there but he doesn’t ruin the song.
I think it would be incredibly interesting if anything was really written about how they constructed songs together, things have sort of been written about who wrote what melody and who wrote what middle eight, but there has to be something more in depth. I look at the songs and wonder who suggested what key change or tempo change or bit of harmony that made some of those songs great when before they may have just been good.
So I think the question is kind of unfair because they were clearly better together because they always had each others musical opinions to rely on.

So you know for a fact he gave no effort on the song? It’s certainly not a great bass line but it doesn’t ruin the song and a better bass line or riff wouldn’t make the song much better.
That’s like saying, take the one bad bass line or bad guitar solo and that means the other person intentionally tried to ruin the song. Did George try to intentionally ruin I Need You ? No, but sometimes it’s just not your day. Had the Beatles cared more about that song or had Paul been given the opportunity to clean up TLAWR then things would have been different.

Or maybe he was trying to bring some life to a really dull track. Listed to John’s bass on Let it Be, it isn’t any better but I’ve never heard anyone claim that John was intentionally trying to ruin the song. Sometimes the spark just isn’t there and it clearly wasn’t on TLAWR.
Bass lines can’t really ruin songs unless your completely playing the wrong notes or are completely out of rhythm which John wasn’t. Consider disco songs where the bass lines are usually just two notes being played over and over.