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TL;DR:

  • John Lennon said one of his No. 1 songs just came to him.
  • He said it would have sounded clichéd except “now clichés are not clichés anymore.”
  • The tune sounds more like a 1950s Elvis Presley rock ‘n’ roll song than a traditional pop Crosby song.

One of John Lennon‘s No. 1 songs was inspired by Bing Crosby. In addition, it’s a lot more tender than other solo John songs. John revealed what he felt about soft-hearted tunes.

John Lennon wrote 1 of his No. 1 songs when he was in Bermuda

The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features an interview from 1980. In it, John was asked to start talking about his song “(Just Like) Starting Over.”

“Appropriate enough,” he said. “Á la Bing Crosby. Well, ‘Starting Over’ and ‘Cleanup Time’ were sorta written on the run after I’d finished all the other work of writing the other ones. They just sort of came. They were like the fun after the work is finished. I was still in Bermuda.”

John Lennon said ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’ would have sounded clichéd at another time

John was asked if “(Just Like) Starting Over” was born out of a “’50s mood.” “Yeah,” he said. “I’d done that music and identified with it — that was my period — but I’d never written a song that sounded like that period. So I just thought, Why the hell not? In the Beatles days that would have been taken as a joke. One avoided clichés.’ Course now clichés are not clichés anymore.”

“(Just Like) Starting Over” definitely sounds like the music of 1950s rock ‘n’ roll artists such as Elvis Presley. Despite this, it doesn’t sound much like a Crosby song. Crosby’s style was traditional pop and “(Just Like) Starting Over” is too guitar-heavy to count as an example of that genre.

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The former Beatle’s softer songs often had edge but ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’ doesn’t

Notably, “(Just Like) Starting Over” is a lot more sentimental than most of John’s other solo songs. When John veered into sentimentality, such as in “Imagine” or “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” he usually incorporated some edgy or socially conscious lyrics. On the other hand, “(Just Like) Starting Over” is just a simple love song. It’s a track about domestic bliss, which makes it a lot more conservative than the “free love” era of the 1960s.

The book Lennon on Lennon: Conversations with John Lennon includes another interview from 1980. In it, John discusses sentimentality. “I mean, that was the thing about the Beatles: they never stuck to one style,” he said. “My image was more rocky, you know? But if you look down those Beatle tracks, I’m right there with all the sentimental … just the same as Paul or anybody else. I loved that music just as much.”

Crosby and John were very different artists but “(Just Like) Starting Over” proves the former Beatle took inspiration from the “White Christmas” singer.

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