{"id":605778,"date":"2026-04-25T14:59:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T14:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/605778\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T14:59:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T14:59:14","slug":"remember-when-john-lennon-and-paul-mccartney-got-into-an-argument-via-song-lyrics-in-1971","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/605778\/","title":{"rendered":"Remember When John Lennon and Paul McCartney Got Into an Argument via Song Lyrics in 1971?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It must have been tough to be a Beatles fan in 1971. You obviously would have felt despondent over the band\u2019s breakup announcement a year earlier. And if you tried to forget, listening to the Fab Four\u2019s solo albums would have reminded you.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because John Lennon and Paul McCartney went back and forth in a series of songs that year, airing out their grievances in public. Luckily, the last of those songs suggested that the animosity might be lessening.<\/p>\n

Paul Started It<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like people weren\u2019t aware of the fact that The Beatles\u2019 breakup had been somewhat acrimonious. Paul McCartney\u2019s announcement of the dissolution in 1970 had been cold and unsentimental. John Lennon sang \u201cI don\u2019t believe in Beatles\u201d on his first solo album and dissed McCartney often in a Rolling Stone interview that same year.<\/p>\n

But the nastiness intensified in 1971 via a series of solo Beatles songs. Paul McCartney started the onslaught. \u201cToo Many People\u201d, the opening track on his 1971 album Ram<\/a>, included a series of pointed lines aimed at someone he directly addresses but doesn\u2019t identify.<\/p>\n

Still, it didn\u2019t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out his target. Lines like \u201cToo many people preaching practices\u201d and \u201cYou took your lucky break and broke it into two\u201d clearly referenced his former bandmate. Nonetheless, the approach of \u201cToo Many People\u201d seemed downright subtle once John Lennon delivered his musical response.<\/p>\n

\u201cSleep\u201d Degradation<\/p>\n

Lennon\u2019s 1971 album Imagine was notable for the softening and sweetening of his musical approach compared to his harrowing post-Beatles solo debut (John Lennon\/Plastic Ono Band). But Lennon left room for the musically bluesy, lyrically scathing \u201cHow Do You Sleep?\u201d on the tracklist.<\/p>\n

Lennon ensured that no one could miss that the song was a swipe at McCartney. He made lyrical references to several songs for which Macca had become famous. For example: \u201cThe only thing you done was Yesterday\/And since you\u2019re gone you\u2019re just Another Day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even more damning, Lennon called McCartney\u2019s music \u201cmuzak to my ears.\u201d He also enlisted George Harrison to play guitar on the track, as if Harrison was endorsing the message. \u201cHow Do You Sleep?\u201d is about as insulting as it gets. What would come next in this war of lyrics?<\/p>\n

Cooler Heads<\/p>\n

Paul McCartney put together the band Wings at lightning speed in the middle of 1971. He and his new cohorts hustled out the album Wild Life and had it in stores by the end of \u201971, hardly a half year after the release of Ram. That haste was reflected in the somewhat disheveled nature of much of the material.<\/p>\n

But \u201cDear Friend\u201d stands out as the most focused song on the album. The somber ballad finds McCartney reaching out to Lennon and wondering if they could repair their relationship. \u201cIs this really the borderline?\u201d McCartney wonders, implying that perhaps the two men needed to ease off on the damaging rhetoric.<\/p>\n

As it turned out, they would do just that. From that point forward, the two no longer zinged each other in their songs. And, perhaps not coincidentally, their old friendship found itself on firmer footing going forward as well.<\/p>\n

Photo by Don Paulsen\/Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It must have been tough to be a Beatles fan in 1971. You obviously would have felt despondent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,15763,216,13501,2156],"class_list":{"0":"post-605778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-john-lennon","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-paul-mccartney","12":"tag-rock-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}