{"id":526921,"date":"2026-04-12T13:32:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T13:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/526921\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T13:32:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T13:32:13","slug":"the-one-beatles-song-john-lennon-hated-more-than-any-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/526921\/","title":{"rendered":"The one Beatles song John Lennon hated more than any other"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"John<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Tony Barnard \/ Los Angeles Times \/ UCLA Library)<\/p>\n

Sun 12 April 2026 10:40, UK <\/p>\n

It\u2019s kind of remarkable that The Beatles<\/a> lasted as long as they did without completely imploding, considering just how much tension there was between the two chief songwriters, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. <\/p>\n

Or perhaps it might be better to say that it was remarkable that Lennon managed to stick things out in the band for as long as he did, considering the wealth of derogatory things he said about some of the songs that he shared credits on with his bass-playing counterpart.<\/p>\n

It seemed that towards the end of the band\u2019s career, nothing was safe from Lennon\u2019s caustic remarks, and he reached a point where the band\u2019s output did more to aggravate him than it did inspire him. So many scathing comments about the other Beatles came from Lennon\u2019s mouth over the years, both while still in the band and during his final years as a solo artist, that it\u2019s hard to find any track released by the band that he hasn\u2019t found some sort of fault in, or worse, an absolute musical sin.<\/p>\n

This growing dissatisfaction wasn\u2019t just about creative differences\u2014it reflected a deeper sense of disillusionment with the band itself. For Lennon, The Beatles had started to feel less like a collaborative outlet and more like a constraint, where compromise often came at the expense of his own artistic instincts.<\/p>\n

As a result, his criticisms became increasingly indiscriminate. Whether aimed at McCartney\u2019s sentimental leanings or his own perceived misfires, Lennon\u2019s blunt honesty revealed an artist who was no longer interested in preserving the band\u2019s legacy so much as tearing it down in pursuit of something more authentic.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s well-documented that Lennon had absolutely no time for Paul\u2019s \u201cgranny shit<\/a>\u201d that took inspiration from vaudeville and music hall styles from several decades before, and he would hurl insults at many of McCartney\u2019s more whimsical songs in the band\u2019s catalogue, such as \u2018When I\u2019m Sixty-Four\u2019 (\u201cI would never dream of writing a song like that\u201d), \u2018Rocky Raccoon\u2019 (\u201cI just thanked God it wasn\u2019t one of mine\u201d), and \u2018Birthday\u2019 (\u201cIt was a piece of garbage\u201d).<\/p>\n

That being said, despite levelling so much harsh criticism at McCartney\u2019s stylistic differences, some of his most hated moments in the Beatles\u2019 discography were songs of his own, proving that not only was he his bandmates\u2019 worst critic, but his own as well.<\/p>\n

There are many John Lennon songs that the man himself hated, and seeing as he had nobody else to harm in saying so except for his own ego, he held back even less when it came to slagging off his own material. The same \u201cgarbage\u201d line he would slander McCartney\u2019s work with was brought out again in reference to his own songs on multiple occasions, with him dismissing \u2018Sun King\u2019 as \u201ca piece of garbage I had around\u201d and extending his trash-talking vocabulary by referring to \u2018Mean Mr. Mustard\u2019 as \u201ca bit of crap I wrote in India\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, despite not having much faith in these two Abbey Road classics as well as some other brilliant tracks<\/a> the band would release, he was even more unsympathetic towards earlier songs of his, and while he would express outright vitriol for the Help! cut \u2018It\u2019s Only Love\u2019, saying to writer David Sheff, \u201cI always thought it was a lousy song. The lyrics were abysmal. I always hated that song,\u201d he\u2019d go one step further in his loathing of Rubber Soul\u2019s closing track \u2018Run For Your Life\u2019, heralding it as his \u201cleast favourite Beatles song\u201d.<\/p>\n

Given that he said so many disparaging things towards songs that McCartney wrote over the years, for him to call his own (admittedly creepy and stalker-ish) effort the worst of the worst from a pool of over 200 Beatles tracks really speaks to how much he disliked \u2018Run For Your Life\u2019. While it\u2019s far from his best work, there are certainly some far more heinous examples of the band at their most atrocious. However, if he was still alive today, you can bet he\u2019d have disowned virtually all of the band\u2019s back catalogue by now.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Tony Barnard \/ Los Angeles Times \/ UCLA Library) Sun 12 April 2026 10:40,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-526921","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}