John Lennon Thought These Were the Worst Beatles Songs
All you need is love, but John Lennon had none for some of The Beatles‘ biggest hits. A newly restored and expanded edition of The Beatles’ Anthology series arrives in November, featuring deluxe versions that span 12 LPs/ 8 CDs, filled with rare material, including never-before-released demos, studio sessions, and other tracks. And the award-winning Anthology docuseries, which first aired in 1995, arrives on Disney+ on Nov. 26.
Many will dive into the Beatles’ music yet again, discovering hidden gems and forgotten treasures — but there are a few tracks that Lennon thought should have stayed buried.
“It’s Only Love”
From 1965’s Help, “It’s Only Love” is a sweet bit of Mod rock, a sweet love song about being in love.
Lennon deplored it.
“That’s the one song I really hate of mine. Terrible lyric,” Lennon told Hit Parader (h/t Far Out). When speaking with Playboy’s David Sheff in 1980, Lennon said that “I always thought [‘It’s Only Love’] was a lousy song. The lyrics were abysmal. I always hated that song.”
“Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”
One of the standout songs from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” which is either a subtle reference to LSD or a nonsensical song of whimsy and wonder.
Again, Lennon hated it.
“When I was a Beatle, I thought we were the best f****** group in the god****** world,” Lennon said in that 1980 Playboy interview. “And believing that is what made us what we were … whether we call it the best rock ‘n roll group or the best pop group or whatever. But you play me those tracks today and I want to remake every damn one of them.”
“I heard ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ last night. It’s abysmal, you know?” he added. “The track is just terrible. I mean, it is a great track, a great song, but it isn’t a great track because it wasn’t made right. You know what I mean?”
“Hello Goodbye”
While many consider “Hello Goodbye” a charming piece of music from Magical Mystery Tour, Lennon says that the song stinks so bad, you can smell it from “a mile away.”
Lennon described the song as “three minutes of contradictions and meaningless juxtapositions,” per Ultimate Classic Rock, and that “the best bit was the end, which we all ad-libbed in the studio, where I played piano.”
“Across The Universe”
With the end of the 1960s came the end of The Beatles. Let It Be marked the end of the Fab Four, and the album contained a version of “Across the Universe.” First released in 1969 on a charity compilation, the Beatles included it on their final album, but Lennon told Playboy in 1980 that the group “didn’t make a good record” of the song.
“I thought Paul [McCartney] subconsciously tried to destroy my great songs,” claimed Lennon. “We would play experimental games with my great pieces, like ‘Strawberry Fields,’ which I always felt was badly recorded. It worked, but it wasn’t what it could have been. I allowed it, though. We would spend hours doing little, detailed cleaning up on Paul’s songs, but when it came to mine … especially a great song like ‘Strawberry Fields’ or ‘Across the Universe’…somehow an atmosphere of looseness and experimentation would come up.”
“Run For Your Life”
In the Beatles fandom, some consider Revolver their best album, while others say the best Beatles record is Rubber Soul. Lennon would likely agree with the first group, since the second album contains “Run For Your Life.”
“I never liked “Run For Your Life,” because it was a song I just knocked off,” he told Rolling Stone in 1971. “It was inspired from – this is a very vague connection – from ‘Baby Let’s Play House.’ There was a line on it – I used to like specific lines from songs – “I’d rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man” – so I wrote it around that but I didn’t think it was that important.”
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