It’s the day when Jackson Browne and John Entwistle and O.V. Wright were born, but they share the birthday with John Lennon, born on this day seventy-five years ago.

Here’s the Beatles with one of Lennon’s early songs, reflecting his departure from the happy love song meme, with “I’m a Loser,” performed in Paris in 1965.

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Ed Kilgore is a political columnist for New York Magazine; a longtime contributor to the Washington Monthly; and a former policy adviser to three governors and a U.S. senator from his home state of Georgia.