A Second Time

Sometimes you hear a song for years, but don't really listen. Yesterday I heard a Beatles' tune (not "Yesterday") that I hadn't heard in a while. So I listened more closely than usual. The tune: "We Can Work It Out."

To the casual listener, this song seems to be about a open-minded guy trying to bridge an impasse with someone (probably his girlfriend). But if you actually look at the words, this singer is pretty certain he's right and is trying to convince the other person that he/she is a fool who hasn't thought this thing through, and if he/she would just change his/her mind, instead of acting like an idiot, then they could solve this problem.

Perhaps a better title would be "My Way Or The Highway."

Columbus Guy says: Long ago I heard someone talking about the John & Paul team and how they were bipolar. At the time I was quite the listener to Beatles songs and knew them pretty well, and it made a lot of sense to me. Today I know them only as a residual. Anyway, this is one of those bipolar songs, the theory of course that Paul wrote the go-go happy stuff, "We can work it out," etc. , and Lennon wrote the edgy stuff, "Think of what you're saying, you can get it wrong and still you think that it's all right."

So maybe Paul won the coin flup on the title. Or maybe Lennon liked to sell songs.

LAGuy responds: This is mostly a Paul song. John added the "Life is very short..." section. So it's Paul who, though the title suggests the opposite, wrote most of the close-minded stuff, starting with the first line: "Try to see it my way."