The Beatles Lyric That Showed How John Lennon Was Insecure Even While on Top of the World
The best artists and songwriters can transcend their public image with their music, letting us know their true inner workings beyond the fame and fortune. John Lennon was one of the first songwriters to reveal his true feelings in that way.
John Lennon Starred in ‘How I Won the War’ & Ended Up Writing “Strawberry Fields Forever”
On the 1964 Beatles song “I’m a Loser,” Lennon told his listeners of his insecurity and lack of self-esteem. Listening to it, it’s understandable if you forget for a few minutes that you’re being addressed by a guy who was one of the most famous human beings in the world at the time.
Beatles for Sale is an album that doesn’t get its fair share of praise, at least when compared to the rest of The Beatles’ catalog. The timing of it, right between two highly hyped movie albums (A Hard Day’s Night and Help!) might have something to do with its relative anonymity. The fact there were no singles released from it also kept it somewhat in the background for years.
Listening to it now, you can hear how John Lennon and Paul McCartney were branching out a bit, both in terms of their stylistic choices and the topics about which they were writing. They were starting to write in a more confessional manner, instead of simply sticking to the familiar pop-song approach.
The influence of Bob Dylan had a lot to do with that in Lennon’s case, as he admitted in several interviews “I’m a Loser” was spurred on by hearing Dylan’s work. But Lennon was also subtly disclosing his inner pain and torment in songs like this, so subtly that even his bandmates didn’t notice at the time, as Paul McCartney explained in an interview with author Barry Miles:
“Looking back on it I think songs like ‘I’m A Loser’ and ‘Nowhere Man’ were John’s cries for help. We used to listen to quite a lot of country and western songs and they are all about sadness and ‘I lost my truck’ so it was quite acceptable to sing ‘I’m a loser.’ You didn’t really think about it at the time, it’s only later you think, God! I think it was pretty brave of John.”
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com