Accidental objectivity

Objectivity is now in such disrepute that its occurrences in modern songwriting are largely accidental. The only example of deliberate objectivity can be found in Brian Wilson’s decision to use his younger brother Dennis’s experience of teenage life in California as the central concept for his band. Brian named his group ‘The Beach Boys’ and single-handedly created the soundtrack to the California experience as a consequence of his astute observation of his fun-loving, original surfer-dude brother.

However, whereas Brian carefully chose his perspective, other songwriters are sometimes forced into a similarly high level of conceptuality by mere virtue of being in a band. As a band member, i.e. part of a rather insular unit, a songwriter might be forgiven for unknowingly colouring his songs with what he observes of his fellow band members’ behaviour. Many of the greatest bands have within their ranks one member who embodies the spirit of the band, and another who is able (however unintentionally) to give artistic expression to that spirit. The former lives the band, while the latter conceptualises the band.

Since Paul was left-handed, John and Paul mirrored each other when they sat down together to write songs. Paul looked more closely into the mirror. He instinctively understood that his raw material was sitting right there in front of him, and was fascinated by it. John was rather too self-involved to observe anything for very long. Paul would spend the rest of his life seeking new and inventive ways to take revenge on his songwriting partner for not reciprocating his fascination. Paul’s artistic instinct, however, could not help but make full use of the objective viewpoint that sitting opposite John provided. The first indication that Paul had a strong tendency to conceptualise was the song ‘She Loves You’, in which the singer is cast in the role of magnanimous observer who prevents his friend, the person who is being addressed, from making a dreadful error. To state it plainly: the object (the ‘You’ in the sentence ‘She Loves You’) is saved through the singer’s objectivity.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the double A-sided single, John brusquely insists: ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’. A sense of annexation is palpable in this song, the act of holding hands symbolizing a kind of chain linking, as in the attaching of a leash to a dog collar. In any case, it becomes patently clear that John aims to engage the attention of his object of affection to the exclusion of everyone and everything else.

Whenever a man sings to a woman that he wants to tell her something, as happens in the opening line of this song, it brings to my mind the joke about what to tell a woman with two black eyes: nothing, you have already told her twice.

Ultimately, however, one senses that it will not matter how many times he tells her: a woman who is set such clear boundaries is guaranteed to put them to the test.

When John sang, Paul listened and took notes. He assimilated the spirit of John, whose type was that of the sensitive, troubled working-class man, acerbic and slightly misogynist. (People have called him a working-class hero (and he himself did nothing to dispel the idea,) but the term constitutes a contradictio in adjecto: if a working-class man is a hero he ceases to be working-class.) Having studied the type for a few years, Paul set about chronicling it, and because of his objective viewpoint, did so more eloquently and with far greater symbolic power than John ever chronicled himself, as is borne out in two apparently quite different ‘Lennon and McCartney’ compositions: ‘You Can’t Do That’, written by John, released in 1964, and ‘Here, There and Everywhere’, written by Paul, released in1966.