'Contemporary and Future Paths in Music Performance, Composition and Analysis'
Annual Meeting of the New Zealand Musicological Society
Hosted by The University of Waikato Conservatorium of Music:
“She Said She Said” – The Influence of Feminine Voices on John Lennon’s Songwriting
Megan Berry and Matthew Bannister
This presentation argues that John Lennon’s songs show a strong and recurrent influence – that of songs sung by women, and that it is possible to show this influence by (among other means) musicological comparisons of Lennon compositions with earlier songs sung by women, which Lennon could conceivably have been influenced by. In some cases, the resemblances and the possibility of influence have already been pointed out, by Lennon himself or other commentators. Other examples are being discussed here for the first time.
A number of factors make this a plausible line of argument: discourses about Lennon and feminine influence, whether from the artist himself, discussions about the artist, or psychoanalytic perspectives; discourses of feminine influence on The Beatles in general and Lennon in particular; and finally how The Beatles are implicated in discussions about gender and popular culture in the 1960s and subsequently (Bradby 2005; Mäkelä 2004; Middleton 2007; Sheff and Golson 1982). Most of the works featuring woman’s voices identified in Lennon’s work come from the same period – the early 1960s, before the Beatles became famous and a time when they were peculiarly open to influence – young, on the lookout for new material (they had a huge repertoire of covers), and absorbing and experimenting with different musical styles in response to audiences in which feminine voices were prominent (Lewisohn 2013).