#hdys

[good-to-drive]

My favorite comments on How Do You Sleep

[eppysboys]

a goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure

[anotherkindofmindpod]

George, who played lead guitar on How Do You Sleep?, tried to mend fences during the October 3 (1971) opening party for the finally completed € 500,000 (S1.200,000) studios in the basement of Apple's Savile Row offices and distanced himself from the song in the process. "It's a bit sad now that Apple is in the position all four of us planned three years ago. l just wish Paul would use the studio if he wants. It's silly not to. I can't see the four of us together again. But I'd like us at least to be friends. We all own this business and it's doing well and I'd like all four of us to enjoy it now."

Asked about How Do You Sleep?, he said, "It doesn't help at all. I'm glad it wasn't about me. I said to John as we were recording it, 'It's pretty hard on him!'”

-McCartney Legacy Vol 1 (2022)

[tavolgisvist]

And for our joy Derek about Engelbert Humperdinck (we know why it's interesting):

So here is Engelbert Humperdinck, if you like, and his story is classic showbiz. He is a man of not much formal education and, insofar as the press have communicated his aesthetic progress to us, he is still less than scholarly. His real name is Gerry Dorsey and in show-business terms, he was a loser for most of his early career. His voice is ‘mediocre’, his appearance is ‘flash’ and he styles himself Engelbert Humperdinck, which is a weird trip, yes? He is very rich and he is very popular and he is very nice to his fans and I dare say he has been very nice to his mother. He looks clean and healthy and young; he tries and strives and yearns to be one of the all-time greats of show-business which in itself is not going to get him into the kingdom of heaven, but what the hell, who is to say Engelbert Humperdinck should not be given love and respect for his efforts and who among us can say he had ever been forced to watch Engelbert and who can say one word about this man which does not apply in some respect or other to ourselves? Is it not the case that those such as Engelbert, the ungroovy, the unhip, the uncool, the mediocrities in our multi-talented world of pop, would not exchange all that they have for just one of the gifts of Bob Dylan? Yet to have what Dylan has is to be Dylan, and to be Dylan is to have been Dylan in the darker years, to have paid his dues, been born in his place, and this is not an option available to anyone but Dylan. For Dylan read George Harrison, for Humperdinck read anyone. Both lists, the hip and the unhip, are endless and it is not the people on the lists who draw them up, it is the rest of us, and if we ourselves do not wish to be on anyone’s list, then we should not be making our own. Turn on, tune in and drop out, writers and critics who prophesy with your pens, keep your eyes open, the chance won’t come again.

(As Time Goes by Derek Taylor)

(Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI)

[pwordmccartney]

i can’t get over how insane how do you sleep is if you think about it for more than ten seconds. the grievances that john allegedly has with paul according to the lyrics— making cheesy music and being too conservative (neither of which are really even true 😭)— are like diss-track ass grievances. You Suck Haha ass lines. mean for no reason.

HOWEVER you can tell how genuinely hurt and angry john is, from the way he sings it, from the demos, from the line “how do you sleep at night.” some of the more specific lines, like the one about Yesterday, the stuff that’s just straight up mean, have been attributed to klein and yoko. that makes sense, both of them were john’s yes-men at the time and if john was mad at paul, they were gonna back him up on that. but i keep coming back to the demos where john will sing “how do you sleep, babe” or “brother.” both words indicate a DEEP connection and thus a deep hurt. making ““““‘muzak”””””” is not a personal slight to john. neither is being attractive, having death rumors, or……. loving your mother???? all these things are is, in john’s eyes, kind of lame and/or funny.

“how do you sleep at night” is not the kind of thing you say to someone who you think makes corny music. it’s not the kind of thing you say to someone who you think is too square. it IS, however, the kind of thing you say to someone who you feel has betrayed you, who you feel has something to apologize for. my question is simple: what did john consider paul’s great infraction, the thing he hoped paul would lose sleep over, the thing he clearly wanted a resolution to?

[mermaidinthecity]

Boy, you tried to make a mess of me. Tear me down and make me believe. Thank God I didn't fall too deep. Why'd you try to make a mess of me? There was something about the things you said just to try to get into my head. Go lie in that empty bed. Boy, you know now just what you did. So tell me why you're trying so hard, well, just to break my heart? Kept on pulling me in. Thought I would give in. So tell me, tell me, before, tell me, I leave, tell me, how do you sleep?

How Do You Sleep by Orianthi

[ohblahdo]

Yeah, I don't know about that. It's like saying, "oh, Too Many People is so mild and vague, John shouldn't have been upset by it" - even if we think that, it doesn't change the fact that John WAS upset by it. I'm sure there are people who could have laughed off HDYS, but Paul doesn't like being criticized, he particularly doesn't like his songwriting ability being criticized, he was sensitive to the fact that all his best friends were allied against him, and he'd already been getting shellacked in the press for two years by the time Imagine was released. So I really don't think he was likely to find "Paul McCartney is a boring, talentless has-been who only writes muzak - co-signed John and George" to be particularly flattering. We can laugh about it now, but I don't think that changes how miserable the experience was for him at the time.

Ok the more I think about How Do You Sleep the more I realize how unharmful it was to Paul. Like now I’m at the point where I believe Paul got off to it. Because the lyrics are so incredibly stupid they don’t really say a single insightful thing about Paul, all the song actually says is that John was still obsessed with him and there’s no way Paul wasn’t lowkey pleased about that lol

[menlove]

I've seen breakup album polls but songs specifically...

[winchestergifs]

HOW DARE YOU » 5/∞

⤷ 2.6 No Exit

[passerine2019]

something I like to talk to beatles moots about

if we’re talking about how deep of a cut the insults go, How Do You Sleep? wins. nearly immediately

If we’re talking about song replay-ability and just the quality of it, Too Many People wins. (I have NOT listened to 3 legs don’t kill me)

I can’t in good faith say that there’s a winner between the Paul and John “distracks” because they’re both good in their own special way (but if I had to choose it would be too many people)

[beatlepaul4ever]

Oh do fuck off Hazza.

Asked about ‘How Do You Sleep?,’ George said, “It doesn’t help at all. I’m glad it wasn’t about me. I said to John as we were recording it, ‘It’s pretty hard on him.’

(Source: “Give Peace a Chance—By George,” Daily Express, October 4, 1971)

[good-to-drive]

There's something very monkey's paw about Paul trying to provoke John into some kind of mild, deniable reaction just to get a little attention and instead getting the harshest diss track he's ever heard with like half their mutual friends tacitly endorsing it, and also in John playing Paul's action-reaction game like he's in it to win it and ending up looking like some petty instigator Paul had rightfully washed his hands of. With very few tweaks that story could be on the alfred hitchock hour and I would probably think it was incredible.

[javelinbk]

You ever think about the whiplash that Paul must have suffered while listening to ‘All Things Must Pass’?

Wah-wah, you made me such a big star

“Wait, is this about who I think it is? The little bastard”

Isn’t it a pity, now isn’t it a shame, how we break each other’s hearts and cause each other pain

“But! You just said…!”

(5 minutes later)

“Tell me whaaaat is my liiiiife without your loooove!!!!”

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

one extra cruelty of Too Many People that oft goes unmentioned: it being the album opener…

[crinkle-cut-birb]

Dokja and his kids!! I put them in order by age (I think idk, I'm just eyeballing here) I feel like everyone forgets about Han Donghoon :( He was the second kid that kdj helped!

[pauls1967moustache]

I just went through your tag John Lennon the hip hop fan and I had no idea I’d be so interested in this! it absolutely makes sense as far as headcanons go where do you think he’d fall in the famous feuds? I.e. Kanye vs Jay z, biggi vs pac (I know biggie repped his city but Tupac was so funny I mean this is so John coded https://youtu.be/30_lTWtGMaE?si=xDgkqFfgSOPb6efN ), Nicki vs literally every female rapper 😭 (unless he’d one of those dudes who doesn’t take female rap seriously so just does not care)

wait are kanye and jay fueding? i thought jay just dropped him because of....y'know...all that. nevertheless, i stand by my original theory that kanye would start shit with john after john said he thought the culty sunday service stuff was kind of lame. although, he was so susceptible to cults, maybe he'd get into it a bit and they'd fight later.

idk where he'd land on biggie and tupac. i actually don't think he'd necessarily care about the regional aspect of it, so maybe he would be on tupac's side initially, and then change his mind when that made him uncool with the bad boy crew lmao. and you're so right about that interview. it brings up a more interesting question though which is what would john think of suge knight??

i think he would have the azealia banks perspective on nicki (she's too good to be embarrassing herself like this, but bitch when moment 4 life comes on). he'd roll with cardi b's whole thing though, i feel like he'd take her side on that one.