‘She Said She Said’

John Lennon’s songs show the recurrent influence of feminine voices. This can be shown by musicological (mainly melodic, occasionally lyrical, occasionally arrangemental) comparisons of Lennon compositions with recordings sung by women, which he was familiar with. These are mostly US R&B/pop recordings, predominantly of the girl-group genre, and derive almost entirely from 1960–1963, a period in which the Beatles were covering huge amounts of material (including most songs mentioned here), but were also beginning to write originals. This chapter will focus on how these tracks influenced Lennon’s songwriting, in order to rewrite the canonical, gendered narrative of Lennon’s and the Beatles’ influences, as discussed by themselves and in many subsequent accounts.