John Lennon And The Art Of The Insult Song

John Lennon was as well-known for his caustic wit as his campaigning for peace, so in his honour I have composed a list of some of the finest insult songs ever written. John’s ‘How Do You Sleep’ comes in at Number One of the first ten insult songs I can think of. If any of you can think of any other great songs that would fit into this category, please feel free to add them in the comments section.

1) How Do you Sleep – John Lennon (on Imagine – 1971)

This is famously John’s riposte to some of the digs Paul made at his expense on a couple of the tracks on Ram. In fairness to Paul, however, they were comparatively mild in comparison to this song, which comes across like a blowtorch of vindictiveness. It culminates in this memorable couplet ‘The sound you make is muzak to my ears / You must have learnt something in all those years…/’ In many respects some of the tracks on Imagine might have quite easily have been included on John’s previous album Plastic Ono Band, and this, along with Gimme Some Truth, is one of them. Plastic Ono Band was a very personal album and most of John’s songs often turn out turn out to be primarily about John (he later claimed that as How Do You Sleep was much about himself as it was about Paul). Indeed, this song could just as easily be an expression of how raw John was feeling after the break-up of The Beatles. Paul has gone on the record about how inconsolable he felt after the band split, indeed he was drugged up and bed-ridden for months and it took him a good few years to get over it. Although John was publicly very aggressive about drawing a line under The Beatles it is not inconceivable to consider that he had some mixed feeling about it. The Beatles had after all been his band and for a long time been the focal point of his life. Bear that in mind and the lyrics to this song take on a very different hue:

2) Positively Fourth Street – Bob Dylan (Single, 1965)

Bob Dylan was always really good at writing vicious put-downs and so there are a number of songs in his canon that could just as easily have been chosen in place of this one – Idiot Wind, for example – but this is still my favourite. As is the case of innumerable Dylan songs there are arguments about who this song was targeted at. However for the purposes of this blog, I personally think that it was probably the folk purists who had turned on him for ‘going electric’. Dylan had only reluctantly been accepted into the Greenwich Village folk community and had often felt patronised by them. When he had initially been signed to Columbia they had been openly sniffy about it and complained that others on the folk circuit would have been more deserving of the record contract. To me the lines that are particularly telling are ‘You say you’ve lost your faith / But that’s not where it’s at / You had no faith to lose / And you know it /.’

http://vimeo.com/71634162

3) Say Man – Bo Diddley with Jerome Green (Single – 1959)

Bo Diddley and his legendary maraca player Jerome Green conceived this work of genius while ‘goofing around’ in the Chess Studios (or so Bo claimed about many of his Chess recordings). Whatever the truth is this is regarded as one of the first ever rap records and it was hilariously funny, being a ‘dozens’ style exchange of insults between Bo and Jerome over that famous beat. Apparently the more rude, dirty insults were taken edited out of the recording but it was so professionally done that it wasn’t noticeable and the record became a hit:

4) I Hate You – The Monks (from Black Monk Time – 1966)

The Monks, on the off-chance that you’ve haven’t heard of them, were formed by five American GIs stationed in Germany during the 1960s. They played an extraordinary kind of avant-rock, which was sometimes not well-received by audiences (one member was nearly strangled by a punter at one gig for ‘perceived blasphemy’). They were possibly one of the most original bands in popular music history; their music had nothing to do with the charts at the time and arguably would never have fitted the musical trends of any era. However, The Monks have an irrepressible charm on it own terms and they have been much imitated by alternative bands. I Hate You has to be heard to be believed; it has minimalist lyrics in which the singer exclaims things like, ‘I hate you, oh I hate with a passion, baby, but call me,’ over a stomping militaristic perverted blues beat. The most alarming element and downright bizarre element of The Monks’ sound is the ever present electric banjo which constantly pounds away on the offbeat. I can’t enthuse about this band enough really.

5) Your Feets Too Big – Fats Waller (Single – 1939)

Going even deeper into the midsts of time, I bring you this nugget. Fats was very fond of insult songs and recorded a number of them, but this was the finest of all. Any song that begins with the lines; ‘/ Up in Harlem, table for two / There was four of us, me, your big feet, and you…/’ has my vote anyway. Even The Beatles, who hated jazz, must have loved Fats because they included this song in their early set-lists. This early example of a video is genius too:

6) Short People – Randy Newman (from Little Criminals – 1977)

Like a lot of Randy Newman’s songs, this record was taken far too literally and people took offence. Even now some radio-stations refuse to play it. Not that Newman is perturbed by that, of course, throughout his career he seems to have relished playing some extremely obnoxious characters in his songs. To him this is the most effective way of unmasking the genuine bigots out there in the world and he has always done that most effectively. Short People should have been seen for what it was; an extremely witty song that employs a cartoon-character narrator spouting some nakedly ludicrous ideas about vertically challenged people. It is so much of a caricature how anyone could do anything other than laugh at it is beyond me. The fact that it was taken seriously tells us everything we need to know about real prejudice.

7) You’re The Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly – Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty (Single – 1978)

My reason for picking this is mainly for the title, which has to be one the best lines of all time. Written by L. E. Dean and Lola Jean Dillon this song became more well-known when Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty recorded their version. In fact the whole song has some screamingly funny lines in it, such as ‘/ You’re the reason that my figure is gone / That’s the reason I’ve no hair left to comb /’ Country music isn’t just about misery, there’s lots of laughs along the way too.

8) That’s A Lie – LL Cool J (from Radio – 1985)

This isn’t the most well-known of LL Cool J tracks but it’s a very entertaining one. LL Cool J is generally associated with more slick recordings now but back in the day he was as raw a rapper as anybody out there and his flow was superb. His lyrics were sharp as a knife too. This is just one example of some of the powerful wit that the great MCs can deliver in hip hop.

9) Shit List – L7 (from Bricks Are Heavy – 1992)

L7 were an all-female grunge band that rocked hard and Shit List is a good example of how nasty they could be when crossed. Dorita Sparks absolutely snarls out some extremely venomous venomous lyrics; ‘/When I get mad and I get pissed / I grab my pen and I write out a list / Of all the people that won’t be missed / You’ve made my shitlist /’, while the band thrash out white-hot heavy rock. L7 wrote some impeccably spiteful songs and this is just one excellent example of what they were capable of achieving when somebody had made the mistake of pissing them off.

10) One Way Or Another – Blondie (from Parallel Lines – 1978)

This is one of the those songs that seems so upbeat and catchy as hell that the meaning almost becomes obscured. Almost, but not quite. Debbie Harry actually wrote the lyrics about an ex-boyfriend who was stalking her at the time and a quick look at the lyrics reveals that they are very dark. There are lines that refer to being parked outside somebody’s house in cover of darkness, breaking and entering, and others about ‘rat food’. It’s all pretty nasty and spiteful stuff indeed. Certainly not the innocent pop song we imagined it was.

A Hard Day’s Night -The Definitive Beatlemania Album

The later Beatles material may be the most fashionable but this is the Fab Four at the moment they conquered the world.

It also captured The Beatles at their most urgent; you still get the impression that this was still a band with something to prove and that they were enjoying the whole process of doing so.  All of the songs on ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ were The Beatles’ own compositions – all by Lennon & McCartney – and there isn’t a Ringo vocal to be heard.  By their next album, ‘Beatles For Sale’, they were beginning to sound exhausted – some of the focus had been lost during the relentless touring, filming and recording and they were back to recording cover versions, albeit temporarily.  ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ showed The Beatles at their most unified and – what’s more – there are no songs with the express purpose of pleasing mums and dads.  The phenomenon of Yesterday hadn’t happened yet.

The Beatles at this point were still a young person’s band and ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ sounds youthful.  Even today everything about the album has a modern sheen, from its timeless cover design to the songs themselves.  The Beatle’s later work, although undeniably of a high (and sometimes higher) quality, sounds comparatively of its time and place.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – if any individual band sums up the 1960s it is The Beatles –  but no other album the band ever released captured the excitement of Beatle mania as well as ‘A Hard Day’s Night’.  The album is shameless pop at its most perfect and much of it is rock n’ roll.

Furthermore, after ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ the popular music industry would never be the same.  The Beatles proved for once and for all that a band could write its own material and perform it as a unit without involving any outsiders.  In 1964 this was unthinkable.  Young people had previously only been allowed to sing what adults had written for them but The Beatles proved that this no longer had to be the case.  Young people could speak for themselves and the music industry could make a huge profit from enabling this to happen.  The Beatles were certainly not the first artists to write their own material but they were certainly the catalysts.

What is remarkable about ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ is how consistently good it is.  Only half of the tracks were used in the soundtrack and the others were of equal quality.  There are some weaker songs; ‘When I Get Home’ is a bit of a plodder even if it is executed well and benefits from a great Lennon vocal and ‘Tell Me Why’ is similar, but all the rest of the songs are nothing short of brilliant.  By doing this The Beatles were breaking the rules were albums were concerned in 1964.  Previously albums had strictly been cash-in on the single affairs, laden with filler and recycled previous successes.  The Beatles upped the ante and as a consequence ‘the album’ as we now know it was born.  Since ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ was soundtrack album, it was the first that the band released singles from (they would also do this on ‘Help!’.  However, it is would easy to imagine that ‘I Should Have Known Better’ and ‘You Can’t Do That’ could have easily topped the charts.

One particular band, The Rolling Stones, already on the scene in 1964, started to write their own songs as a direct consequence of The Beatles’ success.  In the 1960s it became expected and would become impossible to maintain any level of success without doing so, the music scene was evolving so rapidly.  The Beatles were the most successful at seeming to stay ahead because of their superior ability to write songs in practically any genre.

Furthermore, since The Beatles’ line-up consisted of not one, not two, but three songwriters (and latterly even Ringo had a go), the competition even within the band was fierce.  The tensions this created would eventually cause the band to implode in 1970, but in 1964 it was still early days and it was merely helping to maintain a very high quality of songs. John Lennon and Paul McCartney still wrote some of their songs together but were hugely competitive. The song ‘Hard Day’s Night’ was written by Lennon in response to McCartney’s obvious hit-single-in-waiting ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and both would go onto be massive Number One transatlantic hit singles.  Furthermore they are still both among the most loved and memorable songs in The Beatles’ superlative catalogue.

This is very much a Lennon album though and as such features some of best songs and vocal performances.  In 1964 he was still the de facto leader of the band and he was carrying most of the song writing weight (even McCartney has admitted this in his more honest moments).  Ten of the thirteen songs on ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ are Lennon compositions, which is why he does most of the lead vocals.  However, McCartney’s contributions are all outstanding, even if there are only three of them.  Why was Lennon doing the bulk of the writing at this period?  Perhaps it was down to the style of the music the band was performing at this juncture.  Lennon excelled at writing and performing immediate fully-formed pop/rock songs whereas McCartney was more at home spending some time crafting his material.  For example, McCartney has begun writing Yesterday on the set of ‘Hard Day’s Night’ and even his ‘Michelle’ dates from this period.  In this light, it is small wonder that Lennon was coming up with the finished material; he was the most impatient about getting things done.  They were both very different songwriters with talents to match their temperaments, but they both needed each other to bring out the best in their work.

For all of these reasons and simply because I enjoy it, I think ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ is my favourite album by The Beatles.  It may not be their most musically sophisticated but it is the definitive Beatle mania album and it not only allowed them to go on to change popular music forever but enabled others to do so too.