Imagine
John Lennon
Imagine is the second solo studio album by John Lennon, released on September 9, 1971 through Apple Records. Co-produced by Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Phil Spector, it was recorded largely at Lennon's Tittenhurst Park estate in Ascot and represents a deliberate shift in approach from his previous album: where John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970) had been stark, raw, and built on the cathartic methods of primal scream therapy, Imagine sought maximum communication through melody, color, and more elaborate orchestral arrangements. As Lennon himself acknowledged, the title track is "anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic — but because it's sugar-coated, it's accepted." The title track's lyrical vision was partly drawn from Yoko Ono's 1964 poetry collection Grapefruit, and Lennon later expressed regret that he had not credited her as a co-writer. The album reached number one on both the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200, and was voted 80th on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
The ten-track album is emotionally wide-ranging — utopian and intimate in some moments, darkly political and openly vindictive in others. The gentle hymn-like idealism of the title track gives way to "Crippled Inside," a countrified mockery of social conformity, and "Jealous Guy," a disarmingly candid confessional of romantic insecurity. George Harrison, who guested on half the album's tracks, brings his signature slide guitar to the stomping political broadside "Gimme Some Truth," which many critics consider the album's finest moment. "How Do You Sleep?" — set to ominous strings and jagged guitars — is one of rock's most notorious personal attacks, aimed squarely at Paul McCartney amid the acrimony of the Beatles' dissolution. As AllMusic observed, the album's lyrics are "only marginally less confessional" than those of Plastic Ono Band, and while it lacks that album's thematic sweep, it stands as "a remarkable collection of songs that Lennon would never be able to better again" — at once his most commercially accessible record and one of the most emotionally complete self-portraits he ever committed to tape.
Imagine
John Lennon
Imagine is the second solo studio album by John Lennon, released on September 9, 1971 through Apple Records. Co-produced by Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Phil Spector, it was recorded largely at Lennon's Tittenhurst Park estate in Ascot and represents a deliberate shift in approach from his previous album: where John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970) had been stark, raw, and built on the cathartic methods of primal scream therapy, Imagine sought maximum communication through melody, color, and more elaborate orchestral arrangements. As Lennon himself acknowledged, the title track is "anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic — but because it's sugar-coated, it's accepted." The title track's lyrical vision was partly drawn from Yoko Ono's 1964 poetry collection Grapefruit, and Lennon later expressed regret that he had not credited her as a co-writer. The album reached number one on both the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200, and was voted 80th on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
The ten-track album is emotionally wide-ranging — utopian and intimate in some moments, darkly political and openly vindictive in others. The gentle hymn-like idealism of the title track gives way to "Crippled Inside," a countrified mockery of social conformity, and "Jealous Guy," a disarmingly candid confessional of romantic insecurity. George Harrison, who guested on half the album's tracks, brings his signature slide guitar to the stomping political broadside "Gimme Some Truth," which many critics consider the album's finest moment. "How Do You Sleep?" — set to ominous strings and jagged guitars — is one of rock's most notorious personal attacks, aimed squarely at Paul McCartney amid the acrimony of the Beatles' dissolution. As AllMusic observed, the album's lyrics are "only marginally less confessional" than those of Plastic Ono Band, and while it lacks that album's thematic sweep, it stands as "a remarkable collection of songs that Lennon would never be able to better again" — at once his most commercially accessible record and one of the most emotionally complete self-portraits he ever committed to tape.