Cumulative song-writing contributions | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

So here I am, a relative newbie, possibly stirring up the Paul vs. John vs. George as the “real genius” silliness.   Even as I contribute to the madness, I feel like stating the obvious.  All of these guys were brilliant.  Geniuses.  And also at different points in my life I’ve fed off of each of their respective songs more than the others.  They’ve all been, at one time or another, my “favorite Beatle.” 

In a way, of course, Paul McCartney is the last person in the world who needs “defending.”  The dude is mega rich, the most popular singer and songwriter of all time.  But his work gets dissed so often (though not too often here at the Beatles Bible), it makes one wonder why this is so.  My own theory about this is pretty simple.  He’s basically a happy man who writes basically more-or-less domestic tunes about daily life.    The truth is, that’s not very cool.   And so his music is derided because, the honest-to-goodness truth of it is that on balance his music IS more bourgeoisie.   To which I say:  Who cares?  It’s still great music. 

So my point in this post is NOT that Paul was the real genius of the group or that he was the most important Beatle or anything of the like.  All four Beatles made the Beatles the group that they were.  But I will say that a fair look at the evidence suggests that Paul is not to be dismissed as some of his critics would do so (though I see very little of this on this site, thank goodness).    Here are three ways of measuring his song-writing impact on the Beatles: 

1. Authorship of number one songs.
2. Authorship of the 50 most popular songs today according to iTunes.
3. Authorship of the 50 most popular Beatles songs over the last six months according to Last.FM. http://www.last.fm/music/The+Beatles

The first list encompasses songs the band wrote at the time that the band expected the public to like and which, in fact, were popular with the public.

The second and third lists reveal the songs which have stood the test of time and which the public today still seeks out to purchase and hear.   These songs, drawn from The Beatles’ entire catalogue, go well beyond just the singles. 

Of course this investigation proves nothing conclusively.  For one thing, one would have to perhaps weight the songs in list two and three to give more “points” to the most popular songs of the list.  Simply counting songs by authorship might not be an accurate gauge of popularity.  The other problem is the inevitable controversy over song authorship.  To which I respond, use any data one wants.  To be “conservative,” I use John’s recollections (acknowledging up front that surely they’re not completely fair and accurate) about song authorship. 

And the results?  Okay, here I confess to not calculating the results according to a sophisticated formula—counting the songs, weighting the songs both by percentage of authorship and place on the list.  Nope.  I was lazy.   I just eyeballed the three lists, keeping track in my head of the songs’ authors.  And what I discovered is this:  it’s clear that the Beatles were a remarkably balanced group with respect to their song-writing contributions.   Even George, who clearly doesn’t compete with John or Paul in the number of songs contributed, places three gems very high on the lists.   And though to my eyes it looks as though in each of these categories, there are a few more Paul songs than John songs, I  think the biggest take-away is the balance of contributions.  In other words, not much at all is proved.

Except this:  Paul’s music, like John’s and George’s, has stood the test of time.   And despite some talk in chatter-land about Paul’s contributions being dwarfed by John’s, the reality is that his songs, both when they were released as well as some 40 plus years later, rank up there as equals to John’s in their appeal.