#John Lennon

Hi! I am an international fan, I love your blog and insights. I’ve been thinking about the lyrical parallels between these two songs and would love to know your thoughts on them: PM's "As You Lie There": "I used to walk past your house / Every night, I'd look up at your window / The light was on / I saw your silhouette on the blind / Do you think of me? / Do I ever cross your mind?" Beatles/Lennon-McCartney's"No Reply": "This happened once before / When I came to your door, no reply / They said it wasn't you / But I saw you peep through your window / I saw the light... 'Cause I looked up to see your face" Both feature looking up at a lit window and seeing a silhouette/face, but the emotions feel so different. How do you view the connection or evolution between these two tracks? Thank you!

I think emotionally the songs are more same than different. Both songs have a heighted sense of urgency about them. In John’s song, we see the other person. They’ve peeped out the window. They’ve walked into their house. They are spoken about by others, when the singer asks if they are at home and are told no. In “No Reply,” we have the want for the person, frustration because the singer is being ignored. Possibly anger that they are being lied to. There is also an emphasis on their own emotions or what they are feeling. “I nearly died.” The singer puts himself much more in the other person’s head. There is a kind of conversation going on. “If I were you, I’d realize that I love you more than any other guy.” It’s a much more desperate song. With Paul’s song, it’s much more focused on the singer. He’s wondering if the other person thinks about him, but he never puts himself into the other person’s head. He doesn’t assume to know what they are thinking, he’s wondering. The pre-chorus is the only part of the song where the singer mentions what they want. We also never see the person. They are behind the blinds. It adds an air of mystery. Paul has written songs using “she/her” but we assume are for John, “Here, There, and Everywhere,” for example, but not adding the gender of the person adds to the uncertainty of it. We don’t really even know how the singer feels only that he feels something. This can add to the idea that song could be about the first time he saw John before the fete. If it’s the first time that he’s been attracted to someone of the same sex, the questioning and uncertainty comes across. He can’t ask the other person anything, or talk to them because the singer isn’t certain that the other person is also attracted to a boy, again if the song is to John. It’s also interesting that both songs use the word “lie,” but in different contexts. There’s an emotional connection, but it I don’t think the songs represent different points of the same relationship, Paul’s being earlier in the relationship and John’s being later.