Wonder Working Power

Is there a more clearly demarcated Lennon-vs.-McCartney song than the Beatles' great 1965 single "We Can Work It Out"? Sure, "A Day in the Life" is an obvious contender, and "In My Life" should probably also be placed in the running (Paul claims to have written the tune to John's words). But "We Can Work It Out," a song about a couple fighting to stay together, is also—I don't think coincidentally—a duet/duel in which the band's two main personalities stage a musical battle to a draw. They even sing their parts back and forth at each other: McCartney with the ebullient D-major verse of desperate conciliation ("Try to see it my way"), Lennon with the snarling B-minor bridge of double-negative affirmation ("Life is very short"), complete with wheezing harmonium triplets that threaten to send the song spinning off its axis. I can never hear this song without recognizing the sharp contrast of these two rival voices, registering the palpable distance between them, and relishing the waltzing embrace of the song's resolution—in Paul's smiling major key, yes, but with a nod to the rueful triple-time wheeze of John's bridge.

Stevie Wonder's 1970 take on the song is, I think, justly acclaimed as the best Beatles cover ever, and to my mind the key to his version's greatness is that he takes Lennon and McCartney's two clear halves and forges them into a single convincing whole. It isn't just the signature snap of his clavinet (in the black-key-favoring key of E-flat in which he did some of his most enduring bangers) or the fierce backing of his band, which cranks the tempo and temperature of the original up several notches. It's also that the major-minor gospel/blues inflection Wonder gives the verse melody effectively scrambles a central dividing line of the original. Yes, the chords under the respective sections are still a bright major (in his case E-flat) and its relative minor (C-minor), but Wonder embellishes the melody with a blue-noted scale that makes the major-key section grittier and moves it closer to the feel of his minor-key bridge, which also skips the grind of Lennon's harmonium triplets. The result is a song in which night and day, joy and pain, are more evenly distributed throughout, and together given a defiant new punch and vigor.

Not that the song is full steam ahead every second. In fact, around the two-minute mark, it takes a breather that the original doesn't: After a flashing harmonica solo, Wonder returns to the spinning-wheels figure he started the song with, a bluesy eight-note clavinet figure over descending chords and a half-time groove. The backup singers hang fire in anticipation...and then the whole thing kicks back in. They've worked it out.