Stephanie Iken, Attorney at Law

When I first got into the Beatles, John was always my favorite. John Lennon was the loud one, the political one, the one who would say the uncomfortable thing and then double down on it. And if he changed his mind, he didn’t quietly pretend he’d never said the first thing. He’d say that too. Publicly. He evolved in real time and didn’t gaslight anyone about it. That kind of honesty, even when it was messy or arrogant or wrong, meant something to me.

I’ve always been drawn to people who aren’t afraid of the dark or being unapologetically themselves. John wasn’t afraid of the dark. He almost seemed to live there sometimes.

Without that edge, it could have all floated away into sweetness. And John needed Paul too, because without Paul, sometimes the darkness would have swallowed the song whole.

And I can admit, kind of reluctantly, that in the Lennon–McCartney partnership, Paul McCartney was the more naturally gifted musician. His melodies are effortless in a way that feels unfair. He can write lyrics that fit inside a tune like they were born there. The structure, the harmony, the craftsmanship, it’s all there!

But Paul needed John’s bite.

They both lost their mothers young, which is something I think about a lot. Same loss, completely different outcome. John seemed to carry it like a wound that never closed. Paul carried it like something he was trying to turn into comfort. You can feel that difference in their writing, even when they’re singing about the same things.

For most of my life, I connected more with John because… life is hard.

Trauma makes you skeptical.

It makes you question everything and everyone and sometimes even yourself. John’s pessimism, his anger, his refusal to sugarcoat reality… that felt honest.

It felt safe in a strange way, like at least someone else sees it too.

John will always be my favorite Beatle. That’s not changing.

But the last few years I’ve found myself reaching for Paul more, and I didn’t really expect that. His optimism doesn’t feel naïve to me anymore. It feels deliberate. It feels like someone looking at the same broken world and deciding, anyway, I’m going to believe in love!

I’m going to keep choosing it even when it’s uncool or unfashionable or gets dismissed as “soft.”

There’s a part of me that is very John: Guarded, intense, a little cynical because I’ve seen enough to know better.

And there’s a part of me that is very Paul: stubbornly idealistic, still wanting to believe that love isn’t just a lyric but an actual practice.

I think I need that part more right now.

I miss John in a way that doesn’t make sense chronologically, because he died years before I was born in December 1992, but that doesn’t really matter. Some artists feel personal. Like you almost knew them. Like if timelines had shifted slightly, you would have understood each other.

Maybe I’m not drifting away from John at all.

Maybe I’m just allowing myself to need both the edge and the light.

And maybe that’s the magic of it all.