Mr. Pennebaker also explores the songwriting partnership of Lennon and McCartney, comparing the songs they wrote mostly on their own to their true collaborations written “eyeball to eyeball,” as Lennon once put it. The songs on which they collaborated closely produced linguistic patterns strikingly different from those of either songwriter individually. The 15 songs that were true John-Paul partnerships, Mr. Pennebaker says, were “much more positive” in emotional tone and used “more I-words, fewer we-words and much shorter words than either artist normally used on his own.”Other than She Loves You, I wonder what other 14 songs he considers to be "true" collaborations. Obviously most were early in their career. I've read accounts of them sitting at a piano and writing I Want to Hold Your Hand and With a Little Help From My Friends. Does he include songs that one had already written and the other added in a middle eight he'd already written, like A Day in the Life or We Can Work It Out? Or Getting Better, wherein Lennon, hearing the song for the first time, walks into the studio singing the "can't get much worse" part, which probably makes the song? Will I ever find love/success/a reason to get out of fucking bed on any given day?
Mr. Pennebaker discerns that same synergy at work in a very different collection of texts: The Federalist Papers, three of which were written jointly by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. John and Paul and Alexander and James: now that would be a supergroup.
"Told you, professor - two e's in queef!"
No comments:
Post a Comment