Lennon or McCartney? Can statistical analysis solve an authorship puzzle? | Hacker News Reader

Lennon or McCartney? Can statistical analysis solve an authorship puzzle?

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Interesting that they peg "The Word" on McCartney. I'm pretty sure I remember a quote from Lennon where he used it as an example of how he (Lennon) liked to drive one note home. Lennon's sticking on one note is a point made in the article, using "Help" as their example. In "The Word" there are plenty of other notes, the song keeps on stressing the one note where he sings the word "word":

Say the word and you'll be free / Say the word and be like me / Say the word I'm thinking of / Have you heard the word is love?

In the first three lines "word" is by far the most stressed note, and they are all the SAME note. In the last line the stress is on "heard", which rhymes, and is again the same note.

I think there's something wrong with their model where they aren't looking for repetitions of stressed notes, which would actually be totally consistent with their existing characterization of Lennon's melodies.

I'm a little conflicted about the authorship of "The Word". The chord progression is very Paul and the chorus is very John.

> In the first three lines "word" is by far the most stressed note, and they are all the SAME note. In the last line the stress is on "heard", which rhymes, and is again the same note.

That's how it's supposed to work. The downbeat (or the accent) is on "word" in each line and in the last line the lyric changes to "heard" instead of "word.

So I'm neither expecting syncopation here nor am I noticing anything unusual there.

> So I'm neither expecting syncopation here nor am I noticing anything unusual there.

I'm not either, but that doesn't have anything to do with the point. The point is that their classification model has Lennon staying on the same note, and that happens with "The Word" if you give the importance to the highly stressed note (which, as you point out, is on the downbeat). But, partly because the stressed notes are surrounded by other notes, they are assigning the melody to McCartney.

There is a book that attempts to piece together the ownership of the Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starr catalog called Beatles Songs(appropriately). It uses anecdotes, interviews, guesswork and black magic in order to attribute song ownership to the respective Beatle. From reading that book, spending 5 years immersed in a Beatles rabbit hole, and some other ways only legal in a few states I can say that a beatles song will mostly be sung by the main writer of the song. The major exception is the songs written for Ringo. The period around Rubber Soul is where things get murky as they were starting to assert themselves as individual songwriters and giving criticism/notes to each others songs. Where early beatles songs would have been a Lennon/McCartney writing collaboration of varying amounts, at that point John was the creative force of the band and wrote most of the original works. As Paul came into his own and started asserting his creativity, songs would be a collaboration after they were written. Paul was more of a producer with a great "feel" on how to make a song. From what I remember from the book Beatles songs, the author attributes the bulk of the song to Lennon, and gives partial credit to Paul. I think this seems about right. This song strikes me as something John wrote and was "punched up" by Paul. Coming from each writers perspective, they probably feel that they were more responsible. John may have written the song, but I seem to remember that Paul wrote the melody line on guitar, which is the main idea of the song.

I know people try to put each Beatle into a box and I they had their indulgent tendencies. However, I think they were really just 4 people that when put together were able to make music that few others could. Each of them has a moment where they are the weird, sappy, schmaltzy, psychedelic or rock n roll song writer. Its a lesson that I feel could also be applied to management when building a team. Find your "beatles". People that when you put them together create better output than each of them could alone.

If you listen to the Beatles' own accounts, they didn't appear to pay much attention to authorship until near the end of the group. They got together, kicked around ideas, made suggestions in a more or less organic way with little attention to source or credit. It was a workman-like "git-er-done" approach. The reason they grouped "Lennon/McCartney" credit together early was in part to make collaboration smoother.

In the latter years of the group, they became more possessive and isolated, for whatever reason, and collaboration was less organic. It illustrates that money and fame DON'T make one satisfied. Egos and personal demons lived on and perhaps got magnified.

Totally agree with that. I would also argue that the last few albums showed songwriting that was less inspired than the early stuff. It was brilliantly executed and produced, but not quite as creative or cohesive. I think that dovetails nicely with your last point.

Re: Stylometry--the use of statistical techniques to determine authorship--is best known for identifying the Unabomber as Theodor Kaczynski

I see different accounts. Many imply his brother "cracked" the case by fingering him as a suspect, not some FBI statistical wizardry. Perhaps stylometry added to the evidence, though.

As far as The Beatles, a large part of their success is the juxtaposition of contrasting styles, in my opinion. Lennon had a sarcastic style and McCartney a more optimistic sound. Too much Lennon is whiny, and too much McCartney is syrupy and cheesy. Mix and/or juxtapose them and you get a great balance and contrast: flavor AND spices.

Your descriptions of their styles (sarcastic-vs-optimistic, whiny-vs-syrupy) are reasonable for their lyrics, but this analysis seems to focus only on the instrumentals, the melodies, chords, and so forth.

Their lyrical differences are reflected in the melodies, of course, but I would not describe Lennon's chord choices as "sarcastic", for example.

Hmmm, what is a "sarcastic" chord? Minors?

> Too much Lennon is whiny, and too much McCartney is syrupy and cheesy.

That's an overly simplistic - and I'd say wrong - characterization.

On the early albums leading up to Rubber Soul, Lennon handles a larger share of lead vocal duties. He sings ballads ("I'll be back", "Anna"), rockers ("A hard day's night", "Twist and shout") and mid-tempo songs that fall somewhere between rockers and ballads (like "you can't do that").

When he does start sharing vocal duties with Paul on Rubber Soul, there's not a single "whiny" Lennon song. There's "Norwegian Wood" and "In my life" (not to mention fillers like "Run for your life") which are written, sung and arranged in anything but a "whiny" style.

Don't get me wrong, many of Lennon's tunes are fantastic. I'm kind of exaggerating the differences to illustrate a point. Although "Norwegian Wood" is indeed not "whiny", if you listen to it together with only other Lennon tunes, it's altogether too weighty. Mixing weightiness with levity of "sun-shiny" tunes (mostly Paul) makes for better entertainment in my opinion. The two's differences make a perfect yin-yang balance, which is part of their formula for success. Too much yin and too much yang sour things. (Also, I'm kind of ignoring their early years when they did mostly cover tunes.)

Sure, do distribution free two sample hypothesis test.

No.

Indeed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

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