10 Rock Songs That Were Written For Somebody Else

There's a good chance that John Lennon had enough songs in the can to last him through the entire '70s if he really wanted to. Outside of the debauchery that he got up to in his lost weekend, he still had that creative drive that was left over from his Beatle days, even finding time to cowrite with David Bowie on Fame and bringing in Elton John to play piano on Whatever Gets You Thru the Night. That lost weekend does catch up with you though, and the final ballad off of Walls and Bridges feels like its out of time entirely.

Going through the entire song, John is in a much different register than he normally is, trading in the traditional rock instruments for an almost swing band arrangement of the tune, as he sings about a man who has seen the pop music machine from the inside out. Having been around the block a couple times during Beatlemania, John certainly knows the cynical nature of the business, but the construction of this song was not originally suited for him.

When John was first writing the song, he had envisioned this being a song that Frank Sinatra could have performed in his prime, and you can really hear why. Old Blue Eyes may not have been the biggest fan of rock music, but there's no doubt that he would have connected with lines like "it's all showbiz." The music world might be shallow from time to time, but the old guard of pop music was made for down and out songs like this.