he was a sad boi 🥲 here him in his stupid red space suit being giddy with his guitar to make up for it

Mimi help this made me think of Paul when it comes to the Beatles 😭

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25167478

i answered a similar question before here but honestly, many reasons. the main factor is of course his art because i genuinely came to the beatles for the yaoi and stayed for the music. i was immediately drawn to his singing and lyrics and ideas more than any other and i was listening to their discography without watching anything, really, so the experience of the music was very exclusive to itself. this continued with their solo work though at that point i was already partial to john. i can also track much of the music i ever loved back to john's influence (if not directly, indirectly). i've been a huge fan of radiohead and arctic monkeys all my life, i loved both nirvana and oasis on and off in high school and uni, and these are explicitly john lennon inspireds. i've just learned that one of my favorite musicians ever st. vincent heavily takes inspiration from john's solo years for her music and even out of the new gen singer-songwriters, the ones i don't follow every move of but have been partial to have always been the ones one way or another have john as their blue print (billie, phoebe, lana (stretching the definition of new gen here)). no one can turn a simple phrase into bleeding emotions like john can and i've always been attracted to that in art. i joke all the time about his self-loathing, depression, high ego combo being relatable but this is really beyond its personal relevance to me, i think it just speaks to something more intrinsic about the ugly bits of being human that i always look for how to express.

secondly, i just find john's personality immensely interesting. i think he was a special type of person, i'm someone who believes in that some people are put on this earth to lead these incredibly intense and compressed lives and leave their impact and they're fascinating just as they are troubling and some others are lucky/unlucky to be caught in their wind and john was that. he is to me loud and boisterous and funny and honest and honest to a fault. he's sensitive and vulnerable and soft-underbellied and hard-masked, and weak, really, in many ways. he's warty and hypocritical and also always in search of ridding himself of these icky bits. he's just so magnetic. there's nothing aspirational about his celebrity nor the way he led his personal life to me and many parts of the mythologized figure he was posthumously made into have been pricked and popped, but i think in his contradictions and intensity he just feels so bigger than life. also between his bold persona and he's actually a wet cat who's a coward that some people are going for nowadays, i think he was just so...brave. not just bold in his art and in his attitude, but, idk, he kept coming back. i think that's what i love about him the most. i don't think john was meant to exist with the music the way paul is. i think he was just meant to express something about life knocking you over and you sticking it out anyway, idk, and music happened to be one of the ways he found how to do so. whatever this aspect of him that makes him attractive to me goes beyond the type and genre of art he was making but is about what's underlying all that. people read him as a cynic for the negative emotions he put in his songs and made people confront but to me he was hope personified. idk i'm tearing up right now because it gets into the more personal reasons for why he means so much to me, but yknow, he was always starting over and i find that aspirational. the circumstances ending his life makes it dark and with the distance john is more story than a real person and he's simply the best story - i cannot discount the appeal of that - but even removed from all that he was just so big like a meteor and so intimate and earnest like a child, and idk, i love him.

many other reasons but i'm emotionally exhausted now yeahhh. ty <3

i have a question for you.

if you could go back in time and witness ONE major beatles moment for yourself, what would it be and why?

hiiii soph, missed you lovely 🥰🥰

i was immediately going to say john and paul meeting but i think that might be a bit of a let down with all the other boys around and the two of them trying hard to get with each other to an observer eye. then i was going to say the moment john said he was leaving the band but i felt so bad just thinking about it. i think i would pick either john and paul acid tripping for the first time together (tho this might also be fully experienced by being in their heads instead of being an observer), a fun and friendly recording day maybe around 65-66, orrrr just a good old beatles show in hamburg before they made it big and were just a good old band playing 8 hour long nights

thank you mwah mwah mwah! 🫶🥰🫶🥰🫶