Researchers use math, statistics to solve mystery of who wrote Beatles song
HALIFAX — Researchers from Canada and the U.S. have used math to unravel one of the greatest musical mysteries of the modern era: Who wrote “In My Life,” a nostalgic rock ballad on the Beatles’ 1965 album “Rubber Soul.”
It’s a song both John Lennon and Paul McCartney have taken credit for, sparking an enduring debate on the authorship of the melody and chords.
But a new statistical model developed by researchers at Dalhousie and Harvard universities has been used to analyze multiple Lennon-McCartney songs, concluding Lennon likely penned “In My Life.”
“There is a chance that Paul wrote it, but from our model we come down on the side that it was John who likely wrote it,” said Jason Brown, a mathematics professor at Dalhousie in Halifax.