John Lennon and Paul McCartney's post-Beatles vicious diss tracks explained

11 March 2025, 11:52

Paul McCartney and John Lennon. Picture: Getty Images

By Mayer Nissim

After The Beatles broke up, John Lennon and Paul McCartney's relationship disintegrated completely.

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The years-long pop battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar concluded with something of a TKO when the latter performed the massive diss track 'Not Like Us' at the Super Bowl in 2025.

But the warring rappers are far from the first friends and collaborators whose relationship devolved into a back-and-forth of insult in songs.

Over half a century earlier, John Lennon and Paul McCartney exchanged a series of barbs at one another in their music.

And while Drake and Kendrick were pally before things went south, that was nothing like the closeness of Lennon and McCartney, who met as teenagers on July 6, 1957 and formed what became arguably the greatest songwriting partnership in history.

Even before The Beatles broke up, things had turned sour between John and Paul, and after the split was made official, things went public. Below we look at each of the diss tracks in turn.

John Lennon - God

God (Remastered 2010)

Q: Is your break with the Beatles temporary or permanent, due to personal differences or musical ones?

PAUL: Personal differences, business differences, musical differences, but most of all because I have a better time with my family. Temporary or permanent? I don’t really know.

Q: Do you foresee a time when Lennon-McCartney becomes an active songwriting partnership again?

PAUL: No.

- Paul McCartney's interview with himself to promote the McCartney album

While John Lennon was pretty much first out of the door when The Beatles finally disintegrated, when it came to the first post-Beatles album – and actually announcing the break-up – Paul got the jump on him.

Macca released the low-key, lo-fi, self-produced and self-titled McCartney on April 17, 1970. It topped the US album chart and went to number 2 in the UK.

Paul's album was a charming, ramshackle, personal statement that seemed to sidestep the whole "being a Beatle" thing almost altogether.

The closest we got to anything about his former life was side one closer 'Man We Was Lonely' ("Yes, we was lonely / And we was hard pressed to find a smile") but it was vague enough to slip under the radar.

Man We Was Lonely (Remastered 2011)

But when it came to that press release promoting the thing, Lennon wasn't best pleased.

"He can’t have his own way, so he’s causing chaos, John told Rolling Stone. "I put out four albums last year, and I didn’t say a f***ing word about quitting."

And when John Lennon's own John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band followed eight months later, it was similar in some ways but very different in others.

While John played plenty of it, the album also featured performances from an all-star band (including Ringo Starr on drums, Klaus Voormann on bass, guest spots from Phil Spector and Billy Preston on piano, plus Yoko Ono on "wind" and Mal Evans on "tea and sympathy".

It was capably produced by Lennon along with Ono and Spector, but also a stripped back, raw affair.

God (Home Demo)

The album was still even more deeply personal than McCartney, and as well as piercing deep into Lennon's emotions and family history ('Mother', 'My Mummy's Dead', 'Working Class Hero'... pretty much the whole thing), it also directly addressed the break-up of The Beatles.

That was especially true on 'God'. On that song John not hinted at the so-called "bigger than Jesus" controversy that almost ripped apart The Beatles and forever changed them ("God is a concept by which we measure our pain").

More strikingly, he also directly namechecked his former band ("I don't believe in Beatles / I just believe in me / Yoko and me") and their songs ("The dream is over/ Yesterday... "I was the walrus / But now I'm John").

A direct hit at Paul? Not quite, but very much taking back control of the narrative of the break-up away from McCartney's faux interview. It was now Lennon who was throwing dirt on the coffin of the Beatles and the 1960s.

Paul and Linda McCartney - 3 Legs

Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney - 3 Legs

The first actual barbs in songs came from the McCartney camp. 11 months after the extremely solo McCartney came the only ever album credited to Paul and Linda McCartney.

Ram wasn't adored by critics on release, but has since been understood as the quiet classic that it always was.

It also featured a couple of songs that were widely perceived to be direct jabs at John.

There's some ambiguity around the first, '3 Legs, which studio engineer Eirik Wangberg said was inspired by a picture drawn by the young Heather McCartney (shades of the official 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' origin story).

Still, it's pretty hard not to draw the obvious conclusion from its lyrics.

"Put my heart around the bend / When I thought you was my friend... But you let me down"

And the three-legged dog that couldn't run? Quite possibly a dig at the three Beatles without Paul completing the quartet?

Paul and Linda McCartney - Too Many People

Too Many People

While there was some plausible deniability with '3 Legs', John Lennon absolutely believed that 'Too Many People' was written about him and Yoko, and that was something that Paul later confirmed.

"The first line is about 'too many people preaching practices'," McCartney told Mojo in 2001.

"I felt John and Yoko were telling everyone what to do. And I felt we didn't need to be told what to do. The whole tenor of the Beatles thing had been, like, to each his own. Freedom."

That echoed what he told Playboy in 1984. "He'd been doing a lot of preaching, and it got up my nose a little bit... that was a little dig at John and Yoko."

Also a bit of needle at John and Yoko was the lyric "You took your lucky break and broke it in two" which was apparently first written as "Yoko took your lucky break and broke it in two", before McCartney toned it down a smidge.

And there was the cheeky opening ("piece of/piss off") too.

In his recent The Lyrics: 1956 To The Present memoir-in-song Paul explained the whole situation, even going so far as to call the song an early "diss track".

"This song was written a year or so after the Beatles breakup, at a time when John was firing missiles at me with his songs, and one or two of them were quite cruel," McCartney said.

"I don’t know what he hoped to gain, other than punching me in the face. The whole thing really annoyed me. I decided to turn my missiles on him too, but I’m not really that kind of a writer, so it was quite veiled."

He added: "It was pretty mild. I didn’t really come out with any savagery, and it’s actually a fairly upbeat song; it doesn’t really sound that vitriolic."

While that was true, it wouldn't be enough to stop the backlash.

John Lennon - How Do You Sleep?

How Do You Sleep? (Takes 5 & 6, Raw Studio Mix Out-take) - John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band

While Paul avoided any out-and-out "savagery", a hurting Lennon didn't hold back one little bit.

"There were a few little digs on his albums, which he kept but I heard them," Lennon told Playboy in 1980 shortly before his death. "So I just thought, Well, hang up being obscure! I’ll just get right down to the nitty-gritty."

And so on the same album as the hippy-dippy 'Imagine' was 'How Do You Sleep?' - an absolutely vicious broadside at Paul.

Where to begin? Pretty much every single word is a dig at Paul. Here's the biggest and nastiest bits:

Those freaks was right when they said you was dead
You live with straights who tell you, you was king
The only thing you done was Yesterday
And since you're gone you're just Another Day
The sound you make is muzak to my ears

On one studio outtake on 2000's Gimme Some Truth movie you can even hear John sing: "Tell me, how do you sleep, you c**t?" Ooof.

Worst of all, John even enlisted George Harrison to play slide guitar on the song, which must have stung Paul all the more.

How Do You Sleep? (Take 1 / Raw Studio Mix)

While Ringo was in the studio, he kept his spot as the one Beatle all the others remained fond of and urged John to rein it in a bit.

"As these lyrics emerged, I remember Ringo getting more and more upset by this,' said Oz publisher Felix Dennis, quoted in Many Years From Now., who said it was "a bit of a shame" that the song wasn't left in the vaults.

"He was really not very happy about this, and at one point I have a clear memory of his saying, 'That's enough, John'."

He added: "Phil Spector never said a single word about the lyrics, but Ringo and other musicians there would remonstrate with him and say, 'Oh, for Christ’s sake, John, that's a bit much, you know!'

"Sometimes he would agree and cross it out. All I can say, if he’d wanted to write something to really hurt Paul’s feelings, they certainly compiled enough material to do so."

In his response, Paul hit back at the whole idea that he was the boring one ("So what if I live with straights?" he told Melody Maker in 1970 "I like straights.") but the thing that upset him most was that attack on his creative output.

"He says the only thing I did was 'Yesterday'. He knows that's wrong. He knows and I know it's not true."

Paul McCartney and John Lennon in happier times. Picture: Getty Images

It could have been worse. The original draft read: "The only thing you done was 'Yesterday'/You probably pinched that bitch anyway." The replacement, which namechecked Macca's 'Another Day' was a much cleverer line at least.

In the years since its release, there was a bit of contextualising.

"It's not about Paul, it’s about me," Lennon said in the Imagine film. "I'm really attacking myself. But I regret the association, well, what’s to regret? He lived through it.

"The only thing that matters is how he and I feel about these things and not what the writer or commentator thinks about it. Him and me are okay."

John added "There's really no feud between me and Paul. It's all good, clean fun. No doubt there will be an answer to 'Sleep' on his next album, but I don't feel that way about him at all.

"It works as a complete song with no relation to Paul. It works as a piece of music."

In The Lyrics, McCartney acknowledged that Yoko Ono and Allen Klein had "helped" John with the poisonous lyrics.

"I had to work very hard not to take it too seriously, but at the back of my mind I was thinking, 'Wait a minute, All I ever did was 'Yesterday'?" Paul said.

"I suppose that’s a funny pun, but all I ever did was 'Yesterday', 'Let It Be', 'The Long And Winding Road', 'Eleanor Rigby', 'Lady Madonna'..."

He added: "A lot of hurt went down during that period in the early 1970s – them feeling hurt, me feeling hurt – but John being John, he was the one who would write a hurtful song. That was his bag."

Wings - Dear Friend

Dear Friend (Remastered 2018)

John was right that Paul responded to 'How Do You Sleep?', but not in the way he might have expected.

'Dear Friend' was more of an olive branch than an attack ("Dear friend, what's the time") and tried to ratchet things down by asking if John's barbs were truly meant ("Are you afraid, or is it true?").

It's even possible that the title was a callback to where this diss track battle all began with Lennon's 'God' ("And so dear friends...")

Wings - Silly Love Songs

Wings - Silly Love Songs (Official Music Video)

Truthfully, as with Kendrick's explosive 'Not Like Us', there wasn't really anywhere you could go after 'How Do You Sleep?'.

John and Paul never rekindled their relationship to the level it had been in The Beatles, but the two reconciled during Lennon's Lost Weekend and even had a drugged-up jam session in March 1974.

Lennon and McCartney were together watching Saturday Night Live in 1976 and seriously considered popping down to perform in response to Lorne Michaels' suggestion that they reunite.

Their meetings were few and far between and 1976 was the last time they were actually together in person, but they continued to speak on the phone.

There was still a little bit of niggle, and while McCartney's 'Silly Little Love Songs' was seen bit of a chuckle at critics who dismissed his songs as such, Paul also confirmed that it was a bit of a biteback at John who obviously felt that way too.

"Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs / And what's wrong with that?". The song was a US number one (and UK number two), which suggests nothing at all.

Paul McCartney - Here Today (Music Video)

Unsurprisingly, after Lennon's tragic murder, Paul's songs to and about John were of a completely different tone.

'Here Today' was taken from Paul's 1982 album Tug of War, his first since Lennon's death and his first post-Beatles album produced by George Martin.

"At least once a tour, that song just gets me," Paul later told The Guardian.

"I'm singing it, and I think I'm okay, and I suddenly realise it's very emotional, and John was a great mate and a very important man in my life, and I miss him, y'know?"