The Beatles’ legacy is often celebrated as flawless, but behind the curtain, their story is far more human. In less than a decade, they reshaped popular music with hundreds of songs that became the soundtrack of an era. Yet even within this staggering body of work, John Lennon—arguably one of the greatest songwriters in history—was never shy about voicing his disappointments.
It’s a familiar struggle for artists: once a piece of work leaves their hands, it no longer belongs to them but to the world. Most keep their reservations private. Lennon, however, was famously unfiltered. He wasn’t afraid to say what others wouldn’t, even when it came to his own songs. One track in particular drew his lasting contempt: “It’s Only Love.”
Though The Beatles evolved from cheeky pop idols into boundary-pushing pioneers of psychedelic rock, Lennon often looked back on his earlier contributions with dissatisfaction. Perfectionism haunted him. In a candid 1980 interview with journalist David Sheff, Lennon admitted, “I feel I could make every fucking one of them better.” His blunt honesty left little room for nostalgia—he could dismiss entire parts of his catalog in a heartbeat.
Among those low points, the 1965 song “It’s Only Love,” from the Help! album, stood out. Even at the time, Lennon hated it. Speaking to British journalist Ray Connelly, he called it “the most embarrassing song I ever wrote,” blasting its simplistic rhymes and “disgusting” lyrics. Years later, he doubled down in another interview: “That’s the one song I really hate of mine. Terrible lyric.”
Listening to the track, it’s not hard to see why Lennon felt that way. Its lines—“It’s only love, and that is all, Why should I feel the way I do?”—lacked the wit, depth, and bite that would later define his songwriting. By 1980, his opinion hadn’t softened. He was still dismissing it as “lousy” and “abysmal,” proof that time hadn’t healed the wound of a song he never wanted to claim.
Paul McCartney, meanwhile, took a gentler view. Reflecting on it years later, he admitted the lyric wasn’t inspired but didn’t see the harm. “Sometimes we didn’t fight it if the lyric came out rather bland on some of those filler songs like ‘It’s Only Love,’” McCartney told Barry Miles. “If a lyric was really bad we’d edit it, but we weren’t that fussy about it, because it’s only a rock ’n’ roll song. I mean, this is not literature.”
That pragmatic outlook sharply contrasted with Lennon’s relentless self-criticism. For Paul, a weak track was just part of the process. For John, it was a scar.
In the grand sweep of The Beatles’ discography, “It’s Only Love” is little more than a footnote—a filler song that never found its way onto major compilations. Yet its existence says something important: even icons are fallible. For Lennon, the track was a painful reminder of his own artistic standards. For the rest of us, it’s proof that even legends leave behind songs they’d rather forget.