Lennon or McCartney — Who Contributed the Most to the Beatles’ Success?

Some stats for the ultimate battle

You could answer the question in a million different ways, and we would never agree.

But if we stuck to some facts, we could get some interesting insights.

Let’s consider all their songs and see how successful they were. Of the 213 songs the Beatles wrote, some had the most impact on their career and made them one of the most creative and revolutionary groups in history.

Based on their compositions, popularity, and their impact on the band’s career, we could go down the trail and pinpoint the band’s MVP.

Which of the fab four is the most irreplaceable?

Give your best guess and see if you get it right at the end.

The band’s repertoire

The band’s 13 original studio albums (one double), two live albums, 13 EPs, a compilation of singles, and another album containing remixes, included over 200 songs, many of which reached Nº1 on both sides of the Atlantic.

In fact, 52 of these songs managed to make it into the Top 100 of the US charts, and 21 of them reached the top of that prestigious list.

About two-thirds of all songs were composed by at least one of the band members, raising the question of which of the four Beatles not only wrote the most songs but the best-performing ones.

In statistical terms, you would say that one band member explains more of the variation. So let’s look at this regression model.

A preliminary investigation in 1997, which sought to determine the main composer of the 186 Beatles songs recorded between 1962 and 1970, including their 13 official albums, covers, and songs not published on LP, found the following result:

John Lennon: 73 songs

Paul McCartney: 70 songs

Covers of other artists: 25 songs

George Harrison: 22

Ringo: 2

If it were a matter of quantity, Lennon would win.

But that’s just part of the whole picture.

The Fab Four

A more detailed investigation by the Spanish magazine El Ejemplar determined that between 1962 and 1970, The Beatles had around 180 composed songs, divided as follows.

The smart

John Lennon, who wrote his first song in 1957 (“Hello Little Girl”), wrote most of the songs for the band (31%), as well as 35% of the songs that reached the Top 100.

Interestingly, 14% of the songs that reached first place were his such:

• “A Hard Day’s Night”
• “Ticket to Ride”
• “Eight Days a Week,”
• “Help”
• “All You Need is Love”
• “Come Together”

The cute

Paul McCartney wrote his first song in 1956 (“I Lost My Little Girl”), inspired by his mother’s death in October of that year. Fun fact, he wrote it using his first guitar, a Framus Zenith, with which he later wrote songs like “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Michelle”.

According to the study, McCartney wrote 29% of The Beatles’ songs, but he was the composer of 49% of the hits that reached the top of the charts.

Among the top 10 songs composed by McCartney are “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “Love Me Do,” along with the famous ballad “Yesterday” (1965), which is considered one of the most famous songs in history and has been recorded by other artists more times than any other song according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

The quiet

George Harrison wrote a total of 22 songs for the band, which equals 12% of the compositions by the quartet.

Two of these songs reached the top spot on the charts: “Something” and “For You Blue.”

The clown

Finally, drummer Ringo Starr was the member with the least impact on the composing process, with only two songs on his game: “Don’t Pass Me By”, (in “The White Album”) and “Octopus’s Garden” (in the “Abbey Road” album).

Some authors attribute a third song to Ringo since he collaborated in the composing process along with Lennon and McCartney when writing the music for “What Goes On” (in the “Rubber Soul” album).

The amazing duo

While McCartney was known for his melodic basslines and catchy songwriting, Lennon was recognized for his introspective lyrics and rebellious spirit. Both artists brought their style to the band, but their collaboration created some of the Beatles’ most memorable tracks.

They composed together many times, especially during the group's early years. In this format, they wrote 26% of the band’s songs, such as the well-known singles “She Loves You,” “From Me to You,” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

At the beginning of the 60s, they began composing together in musical home sessions held at Paul’s house and John’s aunt’s living room. They developed a particular method of working where one would pitch an idea, and the other would complement it.

In some cases, two parts or ideas that had been created individually were combined into a single song. This way, it was common for one of them to create a bridge and add it to the other’s verses and chorus. Lennon called this method “writing face to face” and “playing in each other’s faces.”

For instance, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was the first number-one hit for The Beatles in the United States, and it was written in the basement of the home of actress Jane Asher, who was Paul McCartney’s girlfriend at the time. John Lennon said they were working on the first verse of the song when Paul played the chord after the phrase “got me something” (a minor E), and he turned around and said, “that’s it! Play it again!”

They used to write music together, picking up each other’s cues.

By the mid-1960s, face-to-face musical collaborations between Lennon and McCartney started to decrease, but they continued to collaborate. They often met at Lennon’s house in Kenwood to show each other their songs and wait for a big idea from the other, especially when they relaxed with a cup of tea or smoked a joint.

As time went on, the songs increasingly showed the imprint of one of them, while the other contributed some verses or an alternate chord. For example, the famous song “A Day in the Life,” written by John Lennon, contains a fragment made by McCartney (which starts with the phrase “Woke up, fell out of bed…”) added in the middle of John’s composition (“I read the news today, oh boy…”).

The following excerpt from an interview with Playboy magazine in 1980, can give you an insight into their combined creative process and how complementary they were to each other.

Lennon said:

“You could say that he (McCartney) provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, a certain bluesy edge. There was a period when I thought I didn’t write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock ‘n roll. But, of course, when I think of some of my own songs… ‘In My Life’ or some of the early stuff… ‘This Boy.’ I was writing melody with the best of them. Paul had a lot of training, could play a lot of instruments. He’d say, ‘Well, why don’t you change that there? You’ve done that note 50 times in the song.’ You know, I’ll grab a note and ram it home. Then again, I’d be the one to figure out where to go with a song… a story that Paul would start. In a lot of the songs, my stuff is the middle-eight, the bridge.”

So who’s the MVP?

Considering the stats, you could say it’s McCartney.

While Lennon composed most of the songs for the Beatles (by a low margin) and had the most number-one hits in the UK (29), McCartney has the highest percentage of hits reaching the top chart (49%) and most number-one hits in the US (32).

But as we all know, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Long live The Beatles!

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