Dancing About Architecture: A Songwriter's Guide to the Lennon-McCartney Catalog

by Boman Desai

Dancing About Architecture reveals how J&P's very first song, "Love Me Do," showcased from the start their individual songwriting fingerprints; how John contributed to the quintessential Paulson, "Yesterday"; what makes a Johnsong a Johnsong and a Paulsong a Paulsong; and, among other things, what such different songs as "She Said She Said" and "Good Day Sunshine" have in common, or "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "She's Leaving Home," or "Martha My Dear" and "I'm So Tired" and "Sexy Sadie." Dancing About Architecture traces the individual fingerprints of J&P on each of their 162 collaborations from "Love Me Do" to "The Long and Winding Road," and "I Saw Her Standing There") to the more complex ("Getting Better" and "Happiness Is a Warm Gun") to their culmination in the Abbey Road medley; and provides thumbnails for the structures of each song. Dancing About Architecture is about songwriting more than songwriters and for songwriters more than fans, tracking as it does the expansion of their repertoire through each musical discover from song to song, album to album, and triumph to triumph until elanem were sitting on top of the world.

232 pages, Paperback

First published June 11, 2013