The Beatles was a coming together of four incredible creative forces. Even though John Lennon and Paul McCartney have gone down in history as the greatest songwriting duo of all time, it would be wrong to ignore the contributions of George Harrison and Ringo Starr in shaping the band’s legacy.
All four members brought something so distinct and important. Lennon’s lyrical prowess gave us tracks like ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, ‘Norwegian Wood’ and ‘Across The Universe’. McCartney, meanwhile, is a master of melodies and writing timeless anthems like ‘Let It Be’ and ‘Yesterday’. The world has George Harrison to thank for ‘Here Comes The Sun’ and the ultimate love song, ‘Something. Even Ringo Starr, despite getting a bad rep for being the weakest link, tried his hand at writing.
“What’s your favourite Beatles song?” is possibly the hardest question to answer. So, while trying to qualify The Beatles’ discography is impossible, we can quantify them. Treating it as nothing but a numbers game, Lennon and McCartney obviously led the way as the writers of most of the band’s songs.
As the band’s relationship changed and evolved with their developing fame and eventual falling out, so did their writing process. What started as quite a collaborative relationship between Lennon and McCartney eventually became increasingly splintered as all the band members began fighting for their spot on album tracklists.
Who wrote the most Beatles songs?
.John Lennon: 95
.Paul McCartney: 90
.George Harrison: 25
.Ringo Starr: 5
Who wrote the most number one songs for The Beatles?
It would be wrong to try to qualify who was better, Lennon or McCartney. But the charts have spoken! While both writers contributed huge hits for the band, writing themselves and the band into the history books thanks to their stream of timeless anthems, one of them did come out ahead.
While John Lennon wrote the most songs for the band, Paul McCartney wrote the most number-one hits. By the time the band split, he had penned twenty number-one tracks as the principal songwriter.
