We Can Work It Out

"We Can Work It Out"
Song

We Can Work It Out is a song written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon and released by The Beatles as a "double A-sided" single with "Day Tripper". The song is a classic instance of true Lennon-McCartney collaboration, its authors meeting more closely in a single song only in their masterpiece, "A Day In The Life." John wrote the words and music to the "middle eight," while Paul wrote the words and music to the eight-bar verse/chorus, inspired by his often fractious relationship with Jane Asher. In the lyric, Paul doesn't try to argue the merits of his case, but simply pleads with his woman to see things his way because he believes he is right and she is wrong. Then still an unreconstructed northern male chauvinist, McCartney's notion of a good woman then was someone who would be happy just to be around him as a rock star's "chick." Jane, however, was well educated, independently minded and wanted, above all, to establish her own career. It was typical of Paul that, faced with what could be the end of a relationship, he didn't retreat sobbing to his room, but emerged with the positive slogan "We can work it out."

With its intimations of mortality, Lennon's sixteen-bar bridge contrasts typically with Paul's cajoling optimism. As he remarked to Playboy in 1980, "You've got Paul writing, 'We can work it out.' Real optimistic, and me, impatient, [with] 'Life is very short, and there's no time, For fussing and fighting, my friend.'" Lennon's middle shifts focus from McCartney's concrete reality to a philosophical perspective in B minor, illustrating this with a waltz (reported to have been suggested by George Harrison), probably meant to suggest tiresome struggle. These passages are so suited to his Salvation Army harmonium that it's hard to imagine them not being composed on it. The swell-pedal crescendos he adds to the verses are, on the other hand, textural washes added in the studio--the first of their kind on a Beatles record and signposts to the enriched sound-palette of Revolver.

Recorded four days after its accompanying single track in an unusually long twelve-hour session (the largest amount of studio time devoted to a Beatles track thus far), "We Can Work It Out" became the favorite of the two, despite Lennon's preference for "Day Tripper." Due to arguments over which was to be given the A-side, the single was marketed as the first "double A-side," but airplay and point-of-sale requests soon proved "We Can Work It Out" to be more popular. An inevitable No. 1 on both sides of the Atlantic, it became The Beatles' fastest-selling single since "Can't Buy Me Love," their previous McCartney-led A-side in the UK.

References

• Turner, Steve. A Hard Day's Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles' Song, Harper, New York: 1994, ISBN 006095065X
• MacDonald, Ian. Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties, Great Britain: 1994, ISBN 0805027807

External links

• Lyrics