Towards the end of 1966, John Lennon and Paul McCartney had already become one of the greatest songwriting teams in history. Having conquered the world when The Beatles first landed on American soil, their penchant for writing one classic melody after another was matched by their willingness to experiment with everything they could. When they finally left the road, the future was wide open going into their next record, Sgt Pepper.
While the band were on the precipice of something extraordinary, McCartney recalled that more than a few members of the press thought that the Fab Four were finished. When speaking to Rolling Stone, McCartney remembered: “People in the media sense that there was too much of a lull, which created a vacuum so they could bitch about us now. They’d say, ‘Oh, they’ve dried up’, but we knew we hadn’t.”
Diving headfirst into different musical avenues, Sgt Pepper marked the peak of The Beatles’ power, coming out amid the ‘Summer of Love’ and capturing the zeitgeist of the time better than anything else. Although songs like ‘A Day in the Life’ have been heralded as the perfect of Lennon and McCartney working together, McCartney thought one of the deep cuts said it all for their partnership.
Comparing their writing styles, Lennon and McCartney felt like two sides of the same coin. Since Macca was known for the most saccharine lyrics the band had to offer, Lennon would always be the one adding in a slightly sardonic line to offset that optimism.
To see that in motion, McCartney offered up ‘Getting Better’ as one of the most classic lyrics they would ever write together. Since McCartney wrote the song about a man who’s trying his best to get back on the straight and narrow, Lennon delivers the punchline that our protagonist is a cruel person who has been known to abuse his wife.
In the chorus, Lennon’s retort to McCartney’s “getting better” aesthetic was perfect for McCartney, recalling in 1984, “All I remember is that I said, ‘It’s getting better all the time,’ and John contributed the legendary line ‘It couldn’t get much worse.’ Which I thought was very good. Against the spirit of that song, which was all super-optimistic… then there’s that lovely little sardonic line. Typical John.”
This was only a small helping of the kind of lyrical mind games the pair would get into through the years. A few months before the album was released, the single ‘We Can Work It Out’ had a similar sentiment, with McCartney’s jovial title cut down by Lennon’s reminder that life is far too short to be fussing and fighting.
Although the band would create a landmark album for their generation, Lennon and McCartney would soon find themselves moving further away creatively. After the disastrous sessions for The White Album, the pair began working opposite each other, which led to them bringing in their songs to the session rather than collaborating anymore. Lennon and McCartney would become fantastic songwriters in their own right, but their partnership never got any better than this.
