Which Beatle wrote the most love songs?

You can’t hurry love. It’s a battlefield. A drug. It’s a crazy little thing. It keeps lifting you higher and higher. It’s thicker than water. According to The Beatles, it’s all you need. But which Beatle wrote about it the most?

One of the biggest and most popular themes in music (and all forms of art, really), love is probably one of the most complicated things in the world, and yet incredibly simple when placed into a song. Universally accessible, the theme itself is entirely versatile, which probably also explains why it’ll always be a mainstay of any era. Put it this way: A study by the Psychology of Music found that almost 70% of lyrics in songs from every decade since the 1960s related, in one way or another, to love and romance.

In the context of the Beatles’ story, love is, quite literally, everywhere. If it isn’t the overarching message they shared with the world, it’s in the subtle lines that run throughout most of their music, in the way they lay all of their relationships bare, the longing, the joy, the elation, the heartache, and everything in between. From preaching about it being all you need to begging “don’t let me down”, it fills all edges of their entire story and then some.

Of course, not every song had this focus, and most leaned into it to different degrees depending on who the words were coming from. While the bulk came from John Lennon and Paul McCartney, even those two often came from angles, with McCartney usually playing the softer optimist, his partner going for a more nuanced approach that used love as a conduit to explore life’s broader ambiguities.

Which Beatle wrote the most love songs?
But if we’re to look at the love song in its most obvious form, especially when it comes to more straightforward tropes of romance and relationships, it’s clear that McCartney comes out on top. This is particularly true early on in the Beatles’ story, when their love songs were their bread and butter, and performed with an overt simplicity that made for easy listening, providing a gateway for mass popularity and setting the stage for their other, more experimental explorations down the line.

So, what type of love songs did McCartney write? The titles speak for themselves, leaning into the kind of meet-cutes and crushes that are easy to talk about and understand, the perfect, simple expression that brought people in right from the beginning, like the soft, heartfelt notes of ‘‘And I Love Her’, or the easy catchiness of ‘Love Me Do’, or the soft sentiment of ‘All My Loving’. There’s also the more upbeat energy of ‘Can´t Buy Me Love’, as well as the slower, more contemplative ‘I’ll Follow the Sun’.

This aligned well with the band’s later focus on unity and togetherness, especially set against the backdrop of the era’s sociopolitical hardships and how music was, perhaps for the first time, established as a legitimate tool for reflecting the times and guiding culture. The simplicity of the earlier work and the ways they injected themes like love might have shifted somewhat, but that basis rarely disappeared, even as they became more psychedelic and experimental.

Still, because those touchpoints remain, it means the love in the Beatles’ story will always be a defining factor, and it’s clear that McCartney had the heaviest hand in making that possible. Whether direct and simple or a more raw recollection of all the ways love can make and break your heart, the Beatles’ love songs became their lifeblood, their way of constantly saying it really is all you need.