Uploaded August 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Getting Better - The Beatles
Album: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Difficulty: Beginner (0/6)
"Getting Better" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was written mainly by Paul McCartney, with some of the lyrics written by John Lennon, and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership.
According to Beatles biographer Hunter Davies and MacDonald, the initial idea for the song's title came from a phrase often spoken by Jimmie Nicol, the group's stand-in drummer for the Australian leg of their 1964 world tour. The title and music suggest optimism, but some of the song's lyrics have a more negative tone. In this sense, it reflects the contrasting personas of the two songwriters. In response to McCartney's line, "It's getting better all the time", Lennon replies, "Can't get no worse!" In a December 1983 interview, McCartney praised this contribution as an example of things he "couldn't ever have done himself". In a 1969 interview, Lennon cited "Getting Better" as an example of "pure Beatles" music, whereby, with the four band members developing a song, "we've all written it and we've all turned it into sort of pure Beatle."
Getting Better - The Beatles
Album: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Difficulty: Beginner (0/6)
"Getting Better" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was written mainly by Paul McCartney, with some of the lyrics written by John Lennon, and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership.
According to Beatles biographer Hunter Davies and MacDonald, the initial idea for the song's title came from a phrase often spoken by Jimmie Nicol, the group's stand-in drummer for the Australian leg of their 1964 world tour. The title and music suggest optimism, but some of the song's lyrics have a more negative tone. In this sense, it reflects the contrasting personas of the two songwriters. In response to McCartney's line, "It's getting better all the time", Lennon replies, "Can't get no worse!" In a December 1983 interview, McCartney praised this contribution as an example of things he "couldn't ever have done himself". In a 1969 interview, Lennon cited "Getting Better" as an example of "pure Beatles" music, whereby, with the four band members developing a song, "we've all written it and we've all turned it into sort of pure Beatle."
