Well, of course I've heard these songs before - many, many times - and I knew that Lennon, with his plaintive voice and aching idealism that was somehow never fulfilled, had written and recorded the classic War is Over. But I never put Paul together with the Wonderful Christmas Time song, which I've always liked - it's innocent and happy and family-oriented, like Paul himself.
So who wins? Depends on what you're listening for. And it brings home once again how each songwriter was infinitely better when they were together. They wrote songs "at" each other, ran them by the other, then defended criticisms and added suggestions, so that there was a true amalgam of genius.
Separately, not so much: Paul kind of devolved into sweetness and easy domesticity, and John just got more and more weird under the influence of Yoko, who could be heard screaming and caterwauling in the background of his later songs. And freed from the stabilizing influence of Paul, his mother issues really sent him into a funk.
But the songs they wrote together, or "at" each other, were beyond good. As Leonard Bernstein pointed out, they were pocket symphonies, miniature operas, the likes of which we'll never see in pop music again.
I'll listen to both of these this year, of course, but though Paul still walks among us, I will always miss John and be marked by how he died only three months after my brother Arthur, whom I still can't write about forty years later.
