John Lennon Says He Can Sing This Beatles Song Better Than Paul McCartney

While John Lennon and Paul McCartney have split writing credits in numerous Beatles songs, this wasn’t always the case as the band’s career progressed throughout the years. When they were starting, the duo had to make sure to sit down together and write songs that had the creative DNA and approval of either.

But as the years went by, the band’s calendar of activities, especially live performances, slowly waned which meant that they didn’t need to hustle as hard as they did before. This also showed the drastic differences in the songwriting process of Lennon and McCartney, which was a catalyst in the band’s eventual breakup.

It can also be noted that while either specifically wrote songs for the other members like George Harrison (“Do You Want To Know A Secret”) and Ringo Starr (“With A Little Help From My Friends”), Lennon and McCartney never really wrote a song for each other to sing.

During a 1980 interview with Playboy’s David Sheff, Lennon talks about the Beatles, specifically McCartney, and the songs he liked and didn’t from the former bassist. A highlight of this conversation was when Lennon said there was one song written by McCartney he considered so good that he wished he sung on it instead – Abbey Road’s “Oh Darling!” 

He admitted that it was near impossible for him to be singing it given the rivalry between them. McCartney wrote the tune, but Lennon clearly was interested in it and believed that it would’ve sounded better with his vocals.

McCartney was way too conscious during the song’s recording says engineer Geoff Emerick on Here, There, And Everywhere. More than just McCartney thinking it fit his style (subjectively, of course), it was a subtle way of establishing his ego as half of the enigmatic Beatles songwriting duo.