(Credits: Far Out / Tony Barnard / Los Angeles Times / UCLA Library)
Sat 25 April 2026 8:00, UK
Despite songwriting being an inherently intimate exercise, some of the greatest of all time have been part of a duo. I could go on, listing all of them from history, but I needn’t look any further than the greatest of them all, John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
After a chance meeting at a church fete in Liverpool, the pair realised that they were one half each of a musical intervention. The gods of creativity had somehow split their genius into two, knowing that when combined, the pair would change the world of music and deliver a string of hits that would ultimately define modern songwriting.
There was a yin and yang to their approach also, a sense of light and dark that existed in either musician, most notably Lennon occupying the latter. He would delve into introspective questioning while McCartney would pen the love songs and together, create an album that traversed most experiences of the modern world.
So despite their sibling-like rivalry, the pair seemingly had it all. There was no need to yearn for another partner, for they had the perfect one standing right there opposite themselves. George Harrison probably knew that best, for he simply couldn’t get a look into the songwriting process for several years.
The point was, Lennon and McCartney’s circle was tightly knit, and there was no room for external contributions, not least because they didn’t need it. The rest of the music world watched in envy as the symbiotic pair finished each other’s sentences, melodies and songs, in order to dominate the charts for the entire 1960s.
But maybe it wasn’t enough for Lennon? The eternal pessimist. He highlighted Elton John as the source of true envy, for having someone who could provide him with a healthy stream of songs. He said, “It’s better, I like that,” when explaining the root of his sometimes lyric first approach.
He continued to say, “I sometimes envy Elton John. Bernie Taupin sends him a big stack of words, and he writes all the songs in five days. I could do that. But I am too egocentric to use other people’s words. That’s the problem. So it’s my own fault.”
Come the ‘70s, when Elton and Taupin were storming the charts, Lennon and McCartney’s relationship was truly fractured, and so he likely viewed his own partnership through a ferocious fog. Moreover, there was something of a hierarchy to Elton and Taupin’s relationship, whereby the former would be the sole performer and beneficiary of the music, whereas Lennon’s was more of an equal partnership.
So, despite him acknowledging that his own ego would prevent a relationship like Elton and Taupin’s, there is, of course, an argument to be made that he desired it for the very same reasons. A songwriting partner who would exist in the shadows that McCartney was simply too proud to retreat into. Regardless, Lennon needn’t envy Elton, for as great as he was with Taupin, he wasn’t quite as prolific or innovative as Lennon was with McCartney, despite all of the tension.
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