Songwriting is a true art form and remains one of the few creative industries safeguarded against artificial intelligence. No amount of technology can rival the ethereal creativity of the human mind. Even songwriters sometimes feel as if they aren’t entirely in control of the words that flow from their pen—a sensation the late John Lennon once described experiencing.
Searching for the perfect song can be a soul-crushing task that most artists never accomplish, but Lennon was fortunate enough to tick off the achievement by allowing himself to be possessed. Of course, this result was due to Lennon’s relentless work ethic and songwriting always being at the forefront of his mind, which allowed him to strike lucky.
Towards the late 1960s, Lennon’s entire approach to songwriting was irrecognisable from the method he used in The Beatles’ early days. As his personal life became the focus of tabloid papers worldwide, the singer decided to cut out the middleman and change his style. Rather than writing pop songs, he set out to write personal material which explained his life from the only perspective that mattered. These tracks were so plainly about his personal life that the world’s desire to nose around in his private business would considerably diminish.
The tabloid frenzy wasn’t the only reason Lennon evolved as a songwriter. In addition to growing older and more experienced, he’d also become infatuated with the work of Bob Dylan, who showed him a whole new way of personal expression. These contributing factors combined to make Lennon realise that songwriting could be a mechanism to share his deepest feelings truthfully.
As the years and albums went on, Lennon became more comfortable writing without any assistance from Paul McCartney. Still, on one occasion, he sought help from an unlikely source he couldn’t comprehend.
The track in question, ‘Across The Universe’, appeared on The Beatles’ Let It Be record, released in 1970, but the song was initially composed in 1967. Although he’s credited as a songwriter on ‘Across The Universe’, Lennon later confessed that it “wrote itself” and his job was merely to catch it from the air.
The number is one of Lennon’s best works for the Fab Four, but as he explained to David Sheff of Playboy in 1980, it wasn’t entirely his own creation. Lennon explained: “I was a bit more artsy-fartsy there. I was lying next to my first wife in bed, (the song was originally written in 1967) you know, and I was irritated. She must have been going on and on about something and she’d gone to sleep. I kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream.”
As he could not sleep due to the unknown infiltration of his mind, Lennon did what any right-minded musician would do in this scenario. He explained, “I went downstairs, and it turned into a sort of cosmic song rather than an irritated song—rather than ‘Why are you always mouthing off at me?’ or whatever, right?… and I’ve sat down and looked at it and said, ‘Can I write another one with this meter?’ It’s so interesting. ‘Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup/ They slither while the pass, they slip away across the universe.’ Such an extraordinary meter and I can never repeat it!”
While it would have been easy for Lennon to pretend that ‘Enter The Universe’ resulted from hard work, he honestly admitted, “It’s not a matter of craftsmanship—it wrote itself. It drove me out of bed. I didn’t want to write it… and I couldn’t get to sleep until I put it on paper… It’s like being possessed—like a psychic or a medium. The thing has to go down. It won’t let you sleep, so you have to get up, make it into something, and then you’re allowed to sleep.”
Writing in a dreamlike state also aided McCartney, who penned ‘Yesterday’ in similar conditions. Furthermore, Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac once struggled to sleep because ‘Songbird’ unravelled in her mind, forcing her to pull an all-nighter to avoid forgetting the classic track.
Although all of these instances are inexplicable to a slight degree, they demonstrate how songwriting occupied the minds of talents like Lennon at all times, even when attempting to get their eight hours of sleep.
