Lennon/McCartney

The songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney is one of the best-known and most successful musical collaborations of all time. In an agreement reached early in their partnership, the pair agreed to use the shared credit Lennon-McCartney on all songs written by the duo, alone or in tandem, for The Beatles.

The working partnership

A common misconception is that Lennon and McCartney each wrote their own songs alone and simply credited them to the partnership. While each musician often wrote independently and many Beatles songs are primarily the work of one or the other, it was only rarely that a song would be completed without some input from each of the duo. In many instances, one writer would sketch an idea or a song fragment and bring it to the other to finish or improve; in some cases, two incomplete songs or song ideas that each had worked on individually would be combined into a complete song. Often one of the pair would add a middle eight or bridge section to the other's verse and chorus.

The approach of the Lennon/McCartney songwriting team included elements of competitiveness and mutual inspiration as well as straightforward collaboration. The collaborative and creative merging of musical ideas between the pair is often cited as a key reason for the Beatles' innovativeness and popular success.

The pair wrote songs together from 1958 through 1969. As time went on, the songs increasingly became the work of one writer or the other, often with the partner offering up only a few words or an alternate chord. "A Day in the Life" is a notable and well-known example of a later Beatles song that includes substantial contributions by both Lennon and McCartney, where a separate song by McCartney was used to flesh out the middle of Lennon's composition. "Hey Jude" is an example of a later McCartney song that was improved by relatively minor input from Lennon. While auditioning the song for Lennon, when McCartney came to the lyric "the movement you need is on your shoulder," McCartney assured Lennon that he would change the line — which McCartney felt was nonsensical — as soon as he could come up with a better lyric. Lennon advised McCartney to leave that line alone, saying it was one of the strongest in the song.

A joint credit

Even before they formed the Beatles, McCartney and Lennon began writing songs together at their childhood homes in Liverpool. Lennon suggested that all songs written by either one of the pair (whether written individually or in a collaborative effort) should be credited to both of them, in an effort to emulate the familiarity of the Leiber–Stoller partnership. Between 1962 and 1970 all songs either of them published (including most Beatles songs) were jointly credited. On the Beatles' first album, Please Please Me, the credit appeared as "McCartney−Lennon"; on all later albums Lennon's name appeared first.

As a result of this mutual agreement, songwriting royalties for the bulk of the Beatles' catalog were shared equally between the two.

Controversy

The nature and billing order of the dual credit was an occasional source of controversy. When McCartney released his solo live album Wings Over America in 1976 the songwriting credits for five included Beatles songs were reversed to place McCartney's name first; Lennon's wife Yoko Ono publicly objected to the change, though Lennon himself made no public statement. When John Lennon's 1997 compilation of solo hits, Lennon Legend: The Very Best of John Lennon, was released, "Give Peace a Chance", a song that had previously been credited to Lennon-McCartney, was listed as being composed solely by John Lennon. In the 1990s and early 2000s, McCartney attempted to have the official credit reversed to "McCartney-Lennon" on a number of songs which he wrote independently, most notably "Yesterday," but this change was opposed by Lennon's estate. In a February 2005 statement, however, McCartney stated that "…it's something that I don't have a problem with any more."[1]

Other credits

A number of songs primarily written by the duo and recorded by The Beatles were credited to persons in addition to Lennon and McCartney. "What Goes On" was credited to Lennon-McCartney-Starkey, while "Flying" and "Dig It", as well as the newer "Free as a Bird", were credited to Lennon-McCartney-Harrison-Starkey. The German-language versions of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You" were also credited to additional songwriters for assisting with the translation: "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand" was credited to Lennon-McCartney-Nicholas-Heller and "Sie Liebt Dich" was credited to Lennon-McCartney-Nicholas-Montague.