Who Really Contributed The Most To The Beatles Success - Lennon Or McCartney?

OK, an interesting post by Per Myrsten showing who was the main composer of Beatles songs got me thinking - who was the biggest contributor to the group regarding song-writing and singing combined? Which Beatle could theoretically take the most credit for the bands huge success? I realise that here was a great example of the sum of the parts being greater than the whole and so to single one individual out is distorting the overall picture, but then I thought 'sod it, who cares. I'll just do it anyway'. So here we go.

I decided to use statistics based on the following:

(1.) No.1 hit singles only - rather than going through every country in the world that had ever charted a Beatles hit I opted for what I felt was a representative cross-section of countries: US, UK, Germany, Australia and Holland.

(2.) a points system based on 4 points for the songwriter and 2 points for the singer. I reasoned that being responsible for writing the song was about twice as important as singing it, hence the uneven distribution of points. Where both Lennon and McCartney both contributed to either function the points were evenly split between them.

(3.) the points total awarded at (2.) are then multiplied by the number of countries where the song scored a No.1 hit.

So, for example, for We Can Work It Out, the songwriter was both Lennon and McCartney (2 points each) but the singer was just McCartney (so he gets another 2 points). These points are then multiplied by 4 (because the No.1 hits were in UK, US, Australia and Holland) giving a total for this song of 8 for Lennon and 16 for McCartney.

Taking all of this into account, I got the following table:

song title	comp	singer		UK	US	Ger.	Aus.	Holl.
From Me to You	Len / McC	Len / McC		1
She Loves You	Len / McC	Len / McC		1	1
I Want to Hold Your Hand	Len / McC	Len / McC		1	1	1	1	1
Can't Buy Me Love	McC	McC		1	1		1	1
A Hard Day's Night	Len	Len / McC		1	1		1	1
I Feel Fine	Len	Len		1	1		1	1
Ticket to Ride	Len	Len		1	1		1	1
Help!	Len	Len		1	1		1	1
Day Tripper	Len	Len / McC		1	1		1	1
We Can Work It Out	Len / McC	McC		1	1		1	1
Paperback Writer	McC	McC		1	1	1		1
Yellow Submarine	McC	Sta		1		1	1	1
Eleanor Rigby	McC	McC		1		1	1	1
All You Need Is Love	Len	Len		1	1	1	1	1
Hello, Goodbye	McC	McC		1	1	1	1	1
Lady Madonna	McC	McC		1			1
Hey Jude	McC	McC		1	1	1	1	1
Get Back	McC	McC		1	1	1	1	1
The Ballad of John and Yoko	Len	Len		1		1	1	1
Penny Lane	McC	McC			1	1	1	1
Strawberry Fields Forever	Len	Len			1	1	1	1
Come Together	Len	Len			1	1	1
Something	Har	Har			1	1	1
Let It Be	McC	McC			1	1	1
Yesterday	McC	McC			1			1
Love Me Do	McC	Len / McC			1
Baby It's You	n/a	Len
Eight Days a Week	McC	Len / McC			1
The Long and Winding Road	McC	McC			1
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da	McC	McC				1	1
I Saw Her Standing There	McC	McC					1
I Should Have Known Better	Len	Len					1	1
Rock and Roll Music	n/a	Len					1	1
Nowhere Man	Len	Len					1
Long Tall Sally EP	n/a	McC						1
Michelle	McC	McC						1

The results? Lennon : 264 - McCartney : 334. Paul McCartney was 26% greater than John Lennon in terms of the contribution made to their success while the group was still together*. Not that this matters. Not that this is even true. The methods used to produce this conclusion are totally arbitrary and the Beatles were far too genius as a collective to judge them at all, let alone by my crude methods. But anyway, well done Sir Paul. Give yourself a pat on the back, baby, its you.

* Note, the Magical Mystery Tour EP, The Beatles Movie Medley EP, Free As A Bird, Real Love and All My Loving EP were deliberately omitted from the survey.