Reviews for How Do You Sleep? Lyrics

The demand of John was about the deep meaning of the artistic project, what was realy important to tell to the world, to the human being, then and forever. The art is an important vehicle to all kinds of values. Paul is shurely the greatest musician who ever existed, but he can't see the meaning of within. Lennon, in the other hand, could have never existed without Paul. That is what makes The Beatles something greatfull, irrepetible. How could so differente and contradictory people work toghether?

the truth is i wrote all of john and ringos songs, and then whispered them into their ears when they were sleeping. I was asking john how could he sleep with all the noise and he wrote this the next day.

Both Paul & John are very deeply inspired musicians & writers. I love them both. On thee other hand they both were pretty unheroic when it came to putting songs from George Harrison onto Albums. "It's Only A Northern Song" was originally intended to be on Sgt.Peppers. Nevertheless Sgt.Pepper & Magical Mystery Tour which were landmarks of psychedelic music would of never happened without the vision & rigor of Paul McCartney and can hardly be called "Muzak". Like many artists in the 70's who were traumatized by the sunken ship of freedom's revolution, both Paul & John resumed to more subliminal approaches.
Neither of the two remained as bold as e.g. David Bowie, who openley asked "Is There Life On Mars" (See those Cavemen Go...)

Here's an example for a guy who has "nothing to say" from the album Memory Almost Full:


Lightning hits the house of wax
Poets spill out on the street
To set alight the incomplete
Remainders of the future

Hidden in the yard. Hidden in the yard.

Thunder drowns the trumpets blast
Poets scatter through the night
But they can only dream of flight
Away from their confusion

Hidden in the yard. Undemeath the wall
Buried deep below a thousand layers lay
The answer to it all

Lightning hits the house of wax
Woman scream and run around
To dance upon the battleground
Like wild demented horses

Hidden in the yard. Undemeath the wall
Buried deep below a thousand layers lay
The answer to it all

History has shown Macca to be the most prolific songwriter with more hits. Lennon was more of a message song poet than a melodic tunesmith.

John wanted to save the world with righteous anthems, Paul gave it more ear candy to fight the cynicism. Humanity is not perfect. But music can be.

The reviewer "Abraham" said that John was the one that made coflicts and that Paul never had donde something like this (as we all know Paul never lowered himself making such a cheap and bad tasted song just to counter this attack from John). This CHEAP thing is something that happened because McCartney had donde somthing like this first, and it doesn't matter why, this song it's just GREAT and it's middly offending himself (So Sgt. Pepper took you by surprise/jump when you momma tell you anything)

sorry everybody, but John Lennon was the talented, greater and better musician that the HISTORY has had. McCartney is still now SO FAR of having Lennon's artistic level. He (Lennon) it's just AWSOME!!

To the commentator named "SwingingOnAStar": of course, McCartney published some real trash like "Dance Tonight". This is no good songwriting.
But Lennon also put out songs that were not very inspired musically. Even "How Do You Sleep?" benefits mostly from its groove (generated by a good band), while the chord progression is neglibible and melody just some bluesy notes.
What makes it a good song IS probably the anger expressed in the lyrics, the soul in Lennon's voice performing them. McCartney's performance is not worse than Lennon's, they just have different approaches of songwriting. It is a matter of taste. You can like Lennon's music because he was rather the one to express his thoughts and feelings and vision in the songs and maybe put more "soul" in the music in a rock'n'rollish way. You can like McCartney's music because he has always been more playful and musically inspired, exploring new techniques and ways of songwriting, finding unique but catchy melodies, while regarding lyrics, he never had so much to tell.
Finally: both of them have put out some ingenious work an some crap. And both of them really had a pretty face.
Regards, Nick

The Walrus is right, everything he wrote was right. And also, to anyone who believes Paul died on that Wednesday evening needs to think about all the facts. It's all to perfect the way it happened, how his teeth got smashed so they couldn't use that, and how his hair got burned off in the crash. It was all an elaborate joke by the band, they were testing their fans. They put in these secrets so only the most dedicated fans would figure it out. Paul is alive, deal with it.
When Lennon sings "Those freaks was right when they said you was dead" was just part of the hissy fit, the meaning of this lyric is Lennon saying that Paul is dead to him.

I've never laughed so hard like I did reading some of things people here have written down. First of all to set the record straight. Paul wrote Yesterday. He wrote it when he was like 15. It's a song about his mothers death.
True the break up of the Beatles was not pleasent thing. (Is any break up?) There were a lot of things that happened that all four of them was angry about. But I think John was mostly angry in the way Paul was looking out for himself. You have to remember that Apple wasn't playing fair with any of them. If my memory serves me right. I think Paul jumped in with Lindas father as his lawyer and got control of the rights to there music. Anyway.... Paul and John did shoot some shots at each other through there music and in the art on there albums. Note: The album RAM by McCartney. Has Paul sitting on a ram on the cover. Also on the inside of the album there is a picture of two beetles screwing each other. Johns Imagine ablum had a picture in it with him holding a pig. (His answer to Paul). Dispite there little fued that they had going on I'm not going to sit here and say who was the best. It dosen't matter. As a band they were great. All four of them made the Beatles. After the break up they went on to do there own stuff. True I haven't like everything that they put out. That means all of them. But they have also put out some great stuff.
I have been lucky enough to have seen all four of them at different times in concert. I enjoyed all of them, with the exception of maybe Yoko. But I won't go into that.(I never understood the whole Yoko thing)
So as a fan of the Beatles and a fan of Paul, John, Goerge and Ringo. I say just sit back and enjoy what they have accomplished over the years.
I think John said it best in an interview I herd, when he said.."We were just a band, that's all. Nothing more than that. Just a band".
One more thing. If you get the chance to see Ringo or Paul in concert Please go see them. You will be glad you did.

i now believe Paul was replaced in 66. i would never have believed it 3 weeks ago. but the pictures prove it! obviously everyone who knew Paul knew about it, including John Lennon. this makes this song so much more interesting!

Just so you know (and some archivist among you can look it up), Lennon later told a Rolling Stone reporter that he regretted this song, and that it was unfortunate that he couldn't just take it back. He was angry and he expressed it and was done. But the angry words kept going. He and Paul did make some sort of peace by 1980.

I don't think any of us would want to be judged for a nasty hissy fit we threw years ago and then regretted. (As hissy fits go, this song is quite good, isn't it?)

I really think Ari has it right. You can call John Lennon Godless, and he even stated the band's popular opinion as being greater than Jesus's. I think a God that can't keep his creations satisfied doesn't deserve to be defended whenever someone makes a sparse joke at His deprivation. Lennon's a pessimist and McCartney's an optimist, you can't expect them to get along always and forever.

I personally don't think that you can compare music and minds like Lennon and McCartney, as they are both so different. And to the person who said (as aimed at John) "how do YOU sleep at night now" I think that's a karma-less thing to say. John was a great influence, and I think even today we could use his genius. I honestly think that John's death is a HUGE global loss (even if he wrote angry spirited songs such as 'how do you sleep?'. Besides, only un-enlightened people can't understand his anger at the time.)

Some guy wrote down that Johnny was jealous about Macca´s pretty face ("John might have been jealous of that and the fact that Paul was so cute"), but that's a big bullshit, we all know that Johnny never cared about face's beauty, just remember Yoko's.

John Lennon was cute enough for sure. I’m not sure what the heck that has to do with talent.

If you think about the volume of music that came from The Beatles in just 7 years of recording together it’s just an amazing gift to mankind that some of us were privileged to have lived at a time when we could witness this. To watch them all grow and evolve into maybe the greatest art of our time. Once they broke up Paul showed little or no talent at all. The man was a sell out.

I’ll have to agree with the person who said “John was the genius of the two...Paul totally collapsed artistically after the break-up. just being close to a semi-god as John could inspire everybody, even a monkey to write a good song.”

I’ve always thought that had John met Paul Simon instead of McCartney no one would have ever even know who Paul was, Just another pretty face.

If Paul was really talented his career would have proven itself after the break up , but all he came up with was silly love songs. I venture to guess wouldn’t have even gotten any air time had he not been a Beatle.

In my opinion Paul was a disloyal friend. Of course he later wanted to be the peace maker, as it should be. He should have been ashamed of himself. And very likely he couldn’t sleep.

The last bit of trash he came out with (Dance Tonight) was so worthless it’s hard to even listen too.


Paul McCartney was common, John Lennon was a genius

this song was obviously done with anger and resentment towards Paul, I don´t see any merit in this song or the silly message on it, as we all know Paul never lowered himself making such a cheap and bad tasted song just to counter this attack from John. in fact years later it was Paul who tried to make peaces with John, because he really was his friend, unlike the Godless and hypocrite John Lennon.