Was Lennon really a genius?

It was 50 years ago today… well, this week, that the Beatles released their first hit single, ‘Love Me Do’, on 5 October 1962. Within 12 months, John Lennon and the other three Beatles were household names throughout the world, and in the years since then Lennon’s reputation has expanded with each new wave of listeners. He even has an airport (Liverpool John Lennon Airport: ‘Above us only sky’). Have we now placed him among the greatest English composers and musicians of all time — say, Dunstable, Tallis, Byrd, Purcell, Handel, Elgar and Britten? Will history’s verdict be that Lennon truly deserves to rub shoulders with these geniuses, or was he an accomplished craftsman with a pretty face?

It is tempting to evade comparison by saying that he was a different kind of musician, a writer of pop songs rather than a creator of grand works of art. But until relatively recently, all composers, Purcell and Handel in particular, made it their deliberate business to write pop songs.

What are they? A popular song is written to appeal to everyone, not just musicians and music connoisseurs. In its most basic form it is less than four minutes long and has lyrics arranged in an accessible form (verses, a repeated chorus, maybe a bridge or vamp); a simple, adhesive melody; unfussy instrumental accompaniment; and a regular beat or pulse. It is designed to be remembered, to pass the ‘old grey whistle test’ and thus to be bawled out while drinking and watching games, hummed at work, whistled at home, danced to, marched, fought and died to — to be a part of daily life, ‘everyday beauty’, as Roger Scruton calls it.

A pop song is the musical equivalent of a sketch, or, as Lennon liked to say, a postcard. Good pop songs come quickly to their writers, unlike symphonies or novels, sometimes in an instant.