John Lennon was many things—a musical genius, a cultural revolutionary, a provocateur—but he was also his own harshest critic. While millions of fans cherished every Beatles record, John spent much of his post-Beatles career publicly eviscerating songs he’d written, performed, and watched climb up the charts. If a lyric didn’t ring true or a melody felt too “sweet,” he was the first to tear it down. According to John, the catalog was littered with “filler,” “garbage,” and “lousy” tracks.

Some of his targets were obscure album tracks, but others were beloved classics that defined an era. 🎸 What’s striking about John’s self-criticism isn’t just that he disliked certain songs—it’s how much he disliked them, and how willing he was to say so. This wasn’t false modesty or artistic posturing; it was genuine regret, wrapped in the kind of blunt honesty that made John Lennon both fascinating and occasionally infuriating.

Self-Loathing – The Songs John Couldn’t Stand

1. “Run For Your Life” – The Song He Called His Worst

“I always hated ‘Run For Your Life.’” – John Lennon, 1980 Playboy Interview

If there was one Beatles song John Lennon truly despised, it was “Run For Your Life” from Rubber Soul (1965). In his final major interview, with David Sheff for Playboy in 1980, John didn’t mince words: He called it his least-favorite Beatles song ever. The lyrics—borrowed from an old Elvis Presley song—threatened violence against a cheating woman, and by 1980, Lennon was deeply embarrassed by them. The song’s opening line about preferring to see a woman dead than with another man horrified the older, more reflective Lennon, who had spent years working on his own issues with jealousy and possessiveness.

What makes this confession really striking is that John wrote it quickly, almost carelessly, to fill out the Rubber Soul album. It was a throwaway track that haunted him for the rest of his life. In his 1970 Rolling Stone interview with Jann Wenner, just after the Beatles’ breakup, John admitted he was just “churning it out” and had no real emotional investment in the song. By 1980, that lack of investment had curdled into genuine shame. 😱

2. “It’s Only Love” – “Abysmal” According to John

“I always thought it was a lousy song. The lyrics were abysmal.” – John Lennon, discussing “It’s Only Love”

From the same Rubber Soul era came “It’s Only Love,” and John’s assessment was equally harsh. He told interviewers that the lyrics were “abysmal” and that he never liked the song. The track featured fairly straightforward love song clichés—exactly the kind of thing John was trying to move away from by 1965. While George Harrison’s guitar work saved it from being completely forgettable, John clearly wished he’d spent more time on the writing.

The interesting thing about John’s critique of “It’s Only Love” is that it reveals his evolving artistic standards. By the time of Rubber Soul, he was writing songs like “Girl” and “Norwegian Wood”—complex, layered compositions that explored adult relationships with nuance and wit. “It’s Only Love” represented the simpler, more innocent Beatles he was trying to leave behind, and he hated being reminded of it. 💔

3. “Good Morning Good Morning” – “A Piece of Garbage”

“’Good Morning Good Morning’ is a piece of garbage.” – John Lennon, 1980

From Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band came “Good Morning Good Morning,” another song he called a throwaway. He called it “garbage,” inspired by a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes TV commercial. The song’s saving grace was the barnyard animal sound effects at the end—arranged so each successive animal could eat the one before it—but John felt the song itself had no real substance.

What’s fascinating is that John wrote this during the Sgt. Pepper sessions, arguably the most creative period of his life. Even surrounded by masterpieces like “A Day in the Life” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” he could still produce something he considered worthless. It’s a reminder that even geniuses have off days—and that John Lennon was painfully aware when he’d had one. 📺

4. “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” – All Stolen

“I had all the words... from this old poster.” – John Lennon, 1980

While John didn’t express outright hatred for “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” from Sgt. Pepper, he was dismissive of it because, as he explained to David Sheff, he’d simply copied the lyrics nearly word-for-word from an old Victorian circus poster. He bought the poster at an antique shop and merely rearranged the text into song form. John felt there was no real creative achievement in the song—it was just transcription with a tune.

This confession reveals something important about John’s artistic standards: he valued originality and emotional authenticity above all else. A song could be technically accomplished and commercially successful, but if John felt he’d taken shortcuts or phoned it in, he couldn’t respect it. “Mr. Kite!” was a fascinating sonic experiment (thanks to George Martin’s production wizardry and his playing on piano, harmonium, Hammond organ, Lowrey organ, Wurlitzer organ, and glockenspiel).

But to John, the song was a cheat. 🎪

5. “Across the Universe” – Never Got It Right

“It’s one of the best lyrics I’ve written…. It was a lousy track of a great song.” – John Lennon, 1980

Here’s where John’s self-criticism gets complicated. He loved the lyrics to “Across the Universe”—he considered them among his finest—but he absolutely hated every recorded version of the song. The original 1968 recording bothered him. The slowed-down version on the Let It Be album, drenched in producer Phil Spector’s strings and choirs, drove him crazy. He felt he’d never captured the song the way he heard it in his head.

“The song never came out right,” he lamented.

This might be the saddest entry on this list because it represents not hatred but profound disappointment. John knew he’d written something beautiful, but he felt the Beatles (and later, Spector) had failed to honor it in the studio. It’s the musical equivalent of writing a perfect poem and then having someone read it poorly at your funeral. 🌌

The Songs John Wished He’d Never Written

OK, we’ve covered the songs John deeply disliked for artistic reasons, now let’s talk about the songs that caused him regret for deeper reasons—songs that represented something he later rejected, or songs where the creative process itself became painful.

6. “How Do You Do It” – The One They Refused

The Beatles never officially released “How Do You Do It” by Mitch Murray, but they were pressured by George Martin to record it as a potential single in 1962. John and Paul McCartney hated it, recorded it half-heartedly, and successfully convinced Martin to let them release “Love Me Do” instead.. John later called it “garbage” and said it represented everything wrong with the music industry—songwriters in offices writing calculated hits with no soul or authenticity.

The Beatles’ refusal to release “How Do You Do It” was a pivotal moment. Martin gave the song to Gerry and the Pacemakers instead, and it became a #1 hit. But John never regretted the decision. He would rather have failed with “Love Me Do” (which didn’t fail) than succeed with someone else’s calculated pop formula. This wasn’t just about a specific song—it was about artistic integrity. ✊

7. “The Ballad of John and Yoko” – Too Personal

While John never explicitly said he hated “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” by the late 1970s he expressed ambivalence about it. The song documented his 1969 marriage to Yoko Ono and the media circus that followed, and while it was cathartic at the time, John in retrospect felt it too self-indulgent, too focused on his personal drama.

What bothered John most was that the song contributed to the narrative that Yoko had broken up the Beatles—a narrative he spent years trying to correct. Every time someone played “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” it reinforced the idea that John had chosen Yoko over the band, when the reality was far more complicated. 💔

8. “Revolution 9” – Did It Belong?

John defended “Revolution 9” throughout his life, but even he occasionally questioned whether the eight-minute sound collage belonged on the White Album. In various interviews, he acknowledged that it was “an accident” that grew out of studio experimentation, and that it probably alienated more listeners than it enlightened.

The interesting thing about John’s ambivalence toward “Revolution 9” is that it wasn’t about the art itself—he remained proud of the experimental work—but about the context. On a double album already bursting with conventional songs, did they really need eight minutes of avant-garde sound collage? McCartney certainly didn’t think so, and by 1980, John seemed to concede the point. 🎨

9. “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” – The Endless Ending

John loved the main body of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” from Abbey Road—the raw, primal blues-rock riff perfectly captured his obsessive love for Yoko. But he had mixed feelings about the extended jam at the end, which goes on for several minutes before abruptly cutting off.

In his 1980 Playboy interview, John suggested that the extended ending was partly an artistic statement and partly the result of not knowing how else to finish the song. He and the Beatles had argued about how long the ending should be, and the final version was a compromise that left no one entirely happy. John wished they’d either committed fully to a longer experimental piece or found a cleaner ending. The half-measure bothered him. ⚖️

10. “Dig It” – The Improvised Mess

“Dig It” from Let It Be was barely a song—just a fragment of a jam session that made it onto the album. John later called it “garbage” and expressed bewilderment that it was included at all. The Let It Be sessions were chaotic and often miserable, and “Dig It” represented everything wrong with that period: aimless improvisation, lack of direction, and a band that had lost its sense of purpose.

What makes “Dig It” particularly painful is that it appeared on what would be the Beatles’ final album. Instead of going out on a high note with a polished masterpiece, the album included fragments and outtakes that John felt diminished the Beatles’ legacy. If he could have erased “Dig It” from history, he absolutely would have. 😱

Dishonorable Mention: “Mean Mr. Mustard” – Crap

“Mean Mr. Mustard.” Even the beloved Abbey Road medley wasn’t safe. John dismissed this character sketch as “a bit of crap” he’d written in India that he just had “lying around.”

Why John’s Self-Criticism Matters

John Lennon’s willingness to trash his own work wasn’t just refreshing honesty—it was a form of artistic evolution. By publicly acknowledging his failures and regrets, John was rejecting the myth of the infallible genius. He was saying, in effect, that even Beatles songs could be flawed, rushed, or compromised. And by holding himself to impossible standards, he pushed himself to write better, more honest, more meaningful songs.

The tragedy is that John never got to record definitive new versions of some of these songs. He never got his perfect take of “Across the Universe.” He never got to rewrite “Run For Your Life” with lyrics he could stand behind. And he never got to explain, in his own words, how his feelings about these songs reflected his growth as an artist and a person.

But what we do have are his words—blunt, honest, sometimes cruel, but always authentic. And in those words, we see a portrait of an artist who refused to coast on past glories, who couldn’t forgive himself for taking creative shortcuts, and who held himself to standards that even the Beatles couldn’t always meet. Even the songs he hated remain more interesting than almost anyone else’s greatest hits.💎

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