John Lennon Agreed With a Reviewer When They Called a Beatles Song ‘Simple and Boring’
Toward the end of The Beatles, their songs were more individualized. Instead of creating a song together, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison wanted to express their own artistic vision on different tracks. John Lennon’s Beatles songs were more introspective but less veiled, leading to a reviewer calling his lyrics “simple and boring.” Lennon did agree with this critique but didn’t consider it a problem.
‘The White Album’ featured less of The Beatles working as a group
The White Album (1968) is a double album comprising 30 songs. The group wrote many of its songs during their trip to India, where they embarked on a meditation course. The album drastically differed from their previous album, 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Sgt. Pepper’s was a concert album where the band worked together to create a body of work that told a story.
The White Album is more of a collection of tracks written by each member. However, in a 1971 interview for a book by Peter McCabe and Robert Schonfeld, John Lennon said this was his favorite Beatles album because he thought “the music was better.”
“[Paul] wanted it to be more a group thing, which really means more Paul. So he never liked that album,” Lennon shared. “I always preferred it to all the other albums, including Pepper, because I thought the music was better. The Pepper myth is bigger, but the music on The White Album is far superior, I think.”
John Lennon agreed with a reviewer who called this Beatles song ‘simple and boring’
Paul McCartney often used stories or complex lyrics to write songs, even if the message was easy to understand. However, John Lennon preferred to write more introspective songs, which he did plenty of after he left The Beatles. After The White Album, Lennon wanted to write more personal tracks, but this led to more straightforward lyrics, which he admitted to.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Lennon discussed the song “I Want You (She’s So Heavy” from Abbey Road. He remembered a reviewer criticizing the track for being “simple and boring,” which he agreed with. The song was about Yoko Ono, and he couldn’t find a complex way to express his feelings.
“It was evident in ‘She’s So Heavy,’ in fact, a reviewer wrote of ‘She’s So Heavy’: ‘He seems to have lost his talent for lyrics, it’s so simple and boring.’ ‘She’s So Heavy’ was about Yoko. When it gets down to it, like she said, when you’re drowning, you don’t say, ‘I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,’ you just scream. And in ‘She’s So Heavy,’ I just sang, ‘I want you, I want you so bad, she’s so heavy, I want you,’ like that. I started simplifying my lyrics then, on the double album.”
‘She’s So Heavy’ isn’t a complicated song
The reviewer hit the nail on the head. “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is one of the least complex Beatles songs in their discography. The lyrics mainly consist of “I want you/I want you so bad/It’s driving me mad,” which doesn’t leave much to the imagination. John Lennon wrote a few of The Beatles’ songs for Ono, but this isn’t one where fans need to analyze to figure out its meaning.
