John Lennon: The OG Emo
One day, I want to write a book about Emo music. I’m not entirely sure what about Emo music exactly I will write a book about, but it will most likely be conspiracy related. How the normal emotions that emerge from the interplay between boy and girl could have been so effectively hijacked, corrupted and commodified.
If one was trying to find the origins of Emo music — not the authentic emotional hardcore roots; the mainstream, commercially successful entity that I call Emo that has now transitioned into much of pop and hip-hop as well — where could one possible start?
Rolling Stone helpfully suggests that ‘no band has influenced pop culture the way the Beatles have’. Who is anyone to argue with the expertise of Rolling Stone on such matters, even if on absolutely no other matters?
This works for me, because before Emo, I was raised on The Beatles. I wrote about the role of The Beatles in my formative years here. Highlights include building a fort between the beds of my Nan and Pop to the sound of the first Past Masters (they favoured the early stuff) and Magical Mystery Tour-themed birthday parties organised by my parents (they favoured the later stuff).
As a result, the majority of their music became locked away in my subconsciousness. When I went back and rediscovered them a few years ago, it felt like going back in time. It was an amazing few weeks or so, applying my iTunes categorisation system to their entire body of music.
It also revealed the consistent narrative arc of my musical journey. It is John Lennon’s songs that evoke the strongest feelings in me (not necessarily a good thing). And are almost all of these songs are about girls. Or should I say women. Or, by the end, A Woman. And thus did it occur to me: John Lennon was actually the original — sorry, the OG — Emo.
From what I know about rock and roll, mostly again from Rolling Stone, John Lennon’s songwriting has followed a fairly typical trajectory. Self-indulgent love songs to start (like, most of the first half a dozen albums) followed by self-indulgent drug songs: including messy smacked-out pop (I’m Only Sleeping; Rain) and hallucinogenic freak outs (Tomorrow Never Knows; Because). No clear stoner anthem perhaps, or nothing that comes close to Paul’s almost too clever Got To Get You Into My Life.
After the mandatory sex and drugs, he gradually transitioned into more self-aware and less frivolous territory: political call-to-arms (Revolution; Power to the People), hippy anthems (All You Need is Love; Give Peace a Chance) and a series of verified-timeless social and spiritual musings (Across The Universe; Love; Beautiful Boy; Instant Karma; Mind Games — sorry if I left out your favourite, unless it was Imagine). Not entirely chronological I know, but the trend is there.
But look closer. Hiding underneath the showy rock and roll archetype is another one: the gradual emergence of the modern day Emo itself.
My reluctance and inability to fully remove myself from my Emo music collection has allowed me to nail down some of the main overarching/underlying archetypes that run through it, which I helpfully outlined previously here. Across Lennon’s career we can witness virtually all of these archetypes emerge.
To helpfully pull them together into a more coherent if slightly strained narrative, let us consider them in 4 phases, albeit overlapping and not always entirely linear.
Phase 1: The Ascent
The birth of every Emo is the realisation that they have a way with women. That is, while others may be more interested in money, in status, in intellectual pursuits, they deal primarily in the industry of relationships, of love. Not realising that this is but a mere fraction of the human experience to be mastered, their ability to manipulate the emotions of the opposite sex leads to somewhat of a collapse in humility.
Early Lennon has this in spades, the now pop-culture-ubiquitous swaggeringly-arrogant ladies man. It famously, perhaps notoriously, started with the cajoling and insistence, bordering on emotional blackmail, of Please Please Me. This was the song, and the movement that (if Rolling Stone is to be believed, for the last time) largely berthed a poplar culture. A culture, with all those screaming females losing their minds to these songs, which would suggest some degree of mutual complicity to what it has now transformed in to.
There are better highlights to pull out here, although at this stage it is still difficult to credit a song fully to Lennon, given the tightness of the Lennon-McCartney partnership, so let’s move on.
Phase 2: The Descent
As Lennon progressed in his Emo journey, several other archetypes emerged. For much of his other early work, the Jealous Emo takes over. The end point of this is the Callous Emo, narcissistic and cavalier in his dealings with the opposite; the pride before the fall. Perhaps even manifesting in the Hateful Emo, where all shame is lost, and all perspective; now more cynical, more destructive, perhaps a figure many would now stereotype as the ‘alt-right’.
There are two good examples. Run For Your Life, who’s lyrics speak for themselves, is astonishingly and almost unforgivably tacked onto the end of an album (Rubber Soul) many consider their, and the era’s, best. That he later admitted to domestic abuse during this period is perhaps not surprising.
Then there is Norwegian Wood, slightly less obvious but perhaps even worse: a song about cheating on your wife, waking up alone after she has left for work and then either: getting high, or burning her house down. And then making the conscious decision to share it in a song, wrapped up in the bands first attempt to embrace the music of Eastern spiritual traditions. Classy. But it works, almost perfectly, of course.
Phase 3: The Reckoning
Along with the shamelessness and cynicism, Lennon possessed the self-awareness that is a fundamental prerequisite for entrance into Emo folklore. And it is these redeeming qualities that allow exit from the descent and transition into Phase 3: the spiritual reckoning. Here is where we see the Despairing, Suffering Emo emerge, perhaps a direct descendent of the Selfless Emo, who internalises his pain, maybe even uses it for spiritual growth, even if he has to make sure that the world still knows about it.
Nowhere Man, for example, beforeis a clear and brutal self-assessment of personal failures — an upgrade on the earlier I’m A Loser that reflects the inevitable counter-balance from the unsustainable womanising highs. But we can go back further than that, to see the first signs the Lennon knew best that things weren’t right with his emotions.
I have talked about You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away before. It is my favourite Lennon song, and I can trace its legacy back through my life to when I was first struck by its rawness. Thankfully, he never explained its true meaning, which leaves its meaning to the listener. Some say it is about their producer Brian Epstein’s struggles in being unable to come out as gay. But no great song is ever about one thing, and surely one this good has to come from one’s own heart.
If I may wax lyrical for a moment, I hear it as articulating a — if not the — curse of the Modern Manly Man. Keep this feeling at bay, lest you reveal the extent of your distress, your despair; lest you be selfish enough to pass this on to those you love. It is the plea of someone aware that their emotional growth has been stunted.
One of the most complex archetypes of Phase 3 is the Helpless Emo, which could be more colourfully described as the Drowning Emo. A simple inability to deal with the weight of romantic love to the extent that it begins to collapse the entire self. It’s Only Love was an early warning sign: one of the pioneering examples of cookie cutter Emo Pop lyricism, somewhat redeemed by the sublime music that it is delivered by. Songs like Girl hint at a level of infatuation that is trespassing on dangerous territory.
It was as if this built up over the course of his body of work with the band to create She’s So Heavy. Don’t let that slick Paul bass line deceive you, this song is Emo AF. His final singular piece of work in the Beatles catalogue: an 8 minute, two sentence, deep dive into the depths of accumulated sexual frustration . There is no resolution, no attempt at detachment from or reconciliation with these feelings — quite the opposite, the slow descent of the song in its second half indicates a complete succumbing to them.
Thankfully, when listened to within the structure of the album, George and the sun finally comes to save us.
Phase 4: The Redemption
How is the Emo saved from The Reckoning? What else, but by the love of a good woman. His later and solo work on women, looking beyond the mother issues, was almost exclusively about Yoko: his devotion for and surrender to her, as his path to forgiveness.
Early in this stage, we see the Emotional Blackmail Emo take greater shape, perhaps the most pivotal archetype of the whole narrative. For this we can look no further than Don’t Let Me Down: desperate music, delivered with perfect desperation. A kind of inversion of You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away: too far gone to care about what position the declaration of his needs for a woman might place her in.
Aside from the objective unfairness of the refrain in its title and chorus, the song also contains the line ‘I’m in love for the first time’ that impressively manages to discredit a large majority of the bands earlier material; confessing the lie and deceit underlying much of what made him famous — in love for the first time, after years of writing songs about love. It is a declaration of inferiority and defeat, where reversion to base language is the only thing that will suffice; he got done, he got done good.
But, man, is it a good song. Paul ripping out another all-time bass line, as he was doing for fun by this stage; that slightly weeping, slightly trippy George guitar riffage; the percussive competence of Ringo; Lennon’s slightly animalistic vocal flourishes; topped off somehow by that vaguely lounge jazz keyboard. You try denying that man with that music, regardless of how much of a prick he might be.
This neediness is refined in his cover of Stand By Me: still asking too much, but coming from a person more deserving of it. It is taken one step further in Woman, with the inspiration this time coming from her strengths, rather than just his weaknesses.
It is quite a transformation, as we witness the spiritual Emo emerge from this cocoon of emotional trauma. That someone who started with such toxic views towards women can come full (ish) circle to this point of seeming complete humility must surely give us some comfort in the face of the misogyny within our culture today.
So, what can us modern day Emo’s take from our OG archetype?
One of the drawbacks of documenting most of your life in front of the world is that it allows the world to form relatively well-informed conclusions about your life.
If you were being harsh, you might isolate some glaring character flaws: not just the ever present emotional immaturity, but a seemingly stark absence of contrition and reflection. Did Lennon ever really properly face up to and pay for his earlier awfulness? That is a loaded question, given the events that lead to his final checking out of this character arc.
But conversely, Lennon also demonstrates one of the most emotionally advanced practices available to us: the capacity for unwavering self-forgiveness that bypasses the need to be tied down by the weight of one’s past. Perhaps he really did unravel the mysteries of Instant Karma. He was spitting some pure spiritual fucking fire by the end, after all. Mind Games is basically the framework within which I write, as should anyone who is awake.
And that brings us to Imagine. Some might ask: what right did Lennon have to write it, after all the self-absorbed rubbish he has dished out during his career? Does the artist here really matter? Doesn’t it only matter that the song was written, allowing it to be misappropriated by self-deluded celebrities during a questionable pandemic lockdown almost 50 years later? Does this put the final nail in the coffin that Imagine is in fact self-absorbed rubbish itself?
Actually, I don’t care. Instead, I choose to take great satisfaction and personal validation from the fact that the OG Emo produced what seems destined to be periodically voted in various very important music polls as the Best Song Ever.
There’s something to smile about, Emo kid.