i really do think that we as society don't speak often enough about this photo, bcs wtf man 😭😭😭😭what's better than hitting the proposal pose in front of your bestie (and a whole film crew. and cameras) while singing a love ballad which is certainly not about the very same bestie, nah-ah
Yes. And if it were only that picture, without all the surrounding context, I would probably just see it as them goofing around behind the scenes. Because we actually see similar playful behavior in the official If I Fell sequence from A Hard Day’s Night, when John is playing around and singing directly to Ringo. But if you watch closely, he repeatedly looks past Ringo toward Paul, who is standing on the other side. His attention keeps shifting back and forth between them, and when Paul finally looks back at him, John breaks into a wide smile. And it looks spontaneous, like it just naturally happened in the moment rather than being scripted. He was fixated on Paul both during the filming and behind the scenes, as the picture showed.
Another thing people don’t bring up enough is that Paul said in 1964 that If I Fell was his favorite song. Then, more than forty years later, in 2007, he still called it his favorite John song (it wasn't during an formal interview, he told it privately to someone while they were talking casually). That’s interesting, because in between these years, as well as afterwards and until this day, whenever he's asked (in more public mediums) to list his favorite songs by John, he mostly only mentions Beautiful Boy, Strawberry Fields Forever, Julia, and Across the Universe. Which makes you wonder why he never mentions If I Fell.
And there's something about the Valentine’s card that many overlook. A lot of people think that John used it as a draft while composing the song on the plane, but if you actually look at the card, the lyrics are written very neatly. There are no corrections, scribbles, or crossed-out lines like you’d expect in a draft. And it’s already the final version of the lyrics (well, more like 99%. There are like 3 words that are slightly different, but nothing that changes the meaning). It doesn’t look like someone actively composing on the spot. It looks like he already knew how the song was supposed to be, and deliberately chose to copy the lyrics down on that card. Which makes the whole thing more interesting. The card, as we all know, is addressed to Paul. And according to a guy who obtained one copy of the card, it’s signed with a “J.” He thinks the “J” stands for Jane, but of course, it could also stand for John.
But yes, going back to the picture you mentioned, it becomes much more emotionally loaded once you place it alongside all this other context. You notice how focused John seems on Paul while singing If I Fell, both in the actual filmed scene and in the behind-the-scenes photos. He keeps looking back at him over and over. Which, of course, could still mean nothing.
"It's....semi-autobiographical, but not that conscious, you know. It's really about....it's not about Cyn, my first wife." (John, 1980)
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