Well, Justin, I guess I did reply a bit selectively to your posts. You indeed said some complimentary things about Paul as a songwriter, but then you also said things like this:
"Like.. first of all, McCartney writes a tune that's both catchy and pleasant to the senses... then, Martin/Whoever might decide to dub in a million violins, then hire the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to sing backup. Then, when all 5,700 tracks are filled up with every instument on the planet, including the added sound effects of barking dogs and the clanging of garbage can lids, then comes the big decision... Is the song overproduced enough?
McCartney never quite got over Sergent Pepper, but Lennon went on to write stuff that tore his heart out... like 'Mother'. Chart ratings, and fodder for the masses, are not everyone's gauge of a 'masterpiece'."
Sounds like you want to give the impression of objectivity, but your bias shows badly in a lot of your posts. I was curious to know, however, what you meant by "McCartney never quite got over Sgt Pepper..." By the way, if you actually checked out some of Paul's solo work, you would find that they weren't all "fodder for the masses."
All of The Beatles, including Lennon, wanted to have commercial success, because that meant money for all of them. Why do you think the others wouldn't let McCartney out of the partnership? If he was such a bane on their existence, it seems they would have jumped at the opportunity to get rid of him. They already had a replacement bass player lined up: Klaus Voormann. But they were smart enough to know that McCartney's contributions had earned them a lot of money. My only point of mentioning that is to show that being an artist and being commercially successful are not mutually exclusive concepts. Both Lennon and McCartney were capable of writing "stuff that tore their hearts out" and stuff that was much more commercial and lightweight. I consider Lennon a fantastic songwriter, but he wrote some of the silliest lyrics in The Beatles' catalog. Consider the song "Because." A gorgeous song, because of the arrangement and the 9-part harmony. But if you think about the words, well, I'll put it this way: if McCartney had written lyrics like "because the world is round it turns me on" he would have been raked over the coals for it. Also, when you criticized McCartney as being a "limited" songwriter, I found that a stunning criticism. Just in his career as a Beatle, he wrote in so many genres: rock 'n roll, ballads, folk, jazz-influenced, music hall, etc. Lennon of course, was just as versatile, although their tastes did not always overlap.
Lennon's work stands up on its own. It's not necessary to (and I'll use the word again) belittle McCartney's work in order to make your case. That's a sign of insecurity, and Lennon was far too talented to need that kind of defense. If you're as big a fan of his as you appear to be, you're probably aware that he himself was very insecure, about his voice and about how Paul's music was more commercially successful than his. But his fans don't need to be that way.
