3 Times Iconic Songwriting Duos Split up and Why

Sometimes, even the best songwriting duos need time away from each other. Here are three times that the most iconic songwriting duos broke up and what led to them taking distance.

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Elton John and Bernie Taupin

It’s no secret that Taupin and John are the ultimate lyricist-composer pairing. Together, they’ve produced a string of Elton John hits, including “Tiny Dancer”, “Your Song”, and “Candle In The Wind”. But for his album A Single Man, John sought out a new lyricist to collaborate with. 

As Taupin explained to The Associated Press, the break they took was actually much needed.

“What people don’t realize is that we were joined at the hip at the beginning. It was sort of me and him against the world,” he shared. “But I think once that we gained a modicum of success, it was natural that we would sort of separate and find our own lives.”

In 1983, Taupin and John would fully reunite for the tracks on Elton’s album Too Low For Zero. The project would prove to be a major comeback for John, even giving him his second-best-selling album of that decade.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Lennon and McCartney wrote dozens of songs together, many of which became huge hits for The Beatles. Their partnership started when they were just teenagers, when they made an informal agreement that they would both receive credit for all of their songs. At some point, there were bound to be rifts in their relationship.

In 1960, McCartney and Lennon went through a brief hiatus. Then, they experienced new struggles when The Beatles broke up in 1970. It was then that the once-acclaimed songwriting duo started firing shots at each other through their music.

“It was the 1970s equivalent of what we might today call a ‘diss track,’” McCartney shared in his book Lyrics: 1956 to the Present. “Songs like this, where you’re calling someone out on their behavior, are quite commonplace now, but back then it was a fairly new ‘genre.’”

Fortunately, McCartney revealed on his iHeart podcast that he was able to have some good times with Lennon before his death in 1980.

“In the end, there was something I was very glad of when he got murdered,” he shared. “Was that I had had some really good times with him before that happened.”

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel

Simon and Garfunkel’s ability to produce hits was unmatched. It was songs like “The Sound Of Silence” and “The Boxer” that gave the duo mainstream recognition in the 60s and established them as one of the best musical partnerships. Behind the scenes, though, there was a lot of tension by the time they released Bridge Over Troubled Water.

As Simon explained in the documentary In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon, the breakup really began after Garfunkel accepted a role in the movie Catch-22.

“Artie said, ‘Yeah, the way it’s going to be is that I will do movies for six months, then I’ll come back, you’ll have written the songs, and we will do the album,’ and I thought, ‘Yeah? Actually, no. That’s not gonna happen. I am not gonna do that,’” Simon shared.

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