Milk And Honey
John Lennon & Yoko Ono
Milk and Honey is the sixth and final collaborative album by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, released on January 19, 1984 in the US and January 23 in the UK via Polydor Records — three years after Lennon's murder on December 8, 1980. Subtitled "A Heart Play" like its companion piece Double Fantasy (1980), the album was planned during Lennon's lifetime as the direct sequel and follow-up to that record, with a spring 1981 release date in mind. Recorded at Record Plant East in New York City between August and November 1980, six of Lennon's tracks were essentially unfinished at the time of his death — their vocals carrying a slightly unpolished quality that gives the album a raw, intimate feel quite distinct from Double Fantasy — and Yoko Ono saw the project through to completion, honoring the rough quality of the material rather than overly refining it. The album alternates between Lennon and Ono tracks in the same format as its predecessor, with production by the couple themselves and engineering by Jon Smith and Michael Barbiero.
Lennon's six contributions represent some of his most engaging late-period work. "Nobody Told Me" — the album's strongest track and a UK No. 6 single — finds him cataloguing the bewildering spectacle of the modern world with wry, wide-eyed humor over an insistent shuffle. "I'm Stepping Out" opens the record with a funky strut that embraces both his rock and roll roots and the New York City sound of the early 1980s, while "Borrowed Time" reflects on mortality and gratitude with the ease of a man genuinely at peace with the passage of time. The album closes with its most emotionally devastating pairing: Ono's "Let Me Count the Ways" and Lennon's "Grow Old with Me," both based on Robert and Elizabeth Browning poems and intended as the album's emotional centerpiece — the latter recorded as a bare bedroom demo with just Lennon's voice and acoustic piano, a sketch that transcends its own unfinished state to become one of the most affecting things he ever recorded. As PopMatters observed, Milk and Honey finds Lennon "in a happy state of mind — which is not a bad way to end a story at all."
Milk And Honey
John Lennon & Yoko Ono
Milk and Honey is the sixth and final collaborative album by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, released on January 19, 1984 in the US and January 23 in the UK via Polydor Records — three years after Lennon's murder on December 8, 1980. Subtitled "A Heart Play" like its companion piece Double Fantasy (1980), the album was planned during Lennon's lifetime as the direct sequel and follow-up to that record, with a spring 1981 release date in mind. Recorded at Record Plant East in New York City between August and November 1980, six of Lennon's tracks were essentially unfinished at the time of his death — their vocals carrying a slightly unpolished quality that gives the album a raw, intimate feel quite distinct from Double Fantasy — and Yoko Ono saw the project through to completion, honoring the rough quality of the material rather than overly refining it. The album alternates between Lennon and Ono tracks in the same format as its predecessor, with production by the couple themselves and engineering by Jon Smith and Michael Barbiero.
Lennon's six contributions represent some of his most engaging late-period work. "Nobody Told Me" — the album's strongest track and a UK No. 6 single — finds him cataloguing the bewildering spectacle of the modern world with wry, wide-eyed humor over an insistent shuffle. "I'm Stepping Out" opens the record with a funky strut that embraces both his rock and roll roots and the New York City sound of the early 1980s, while "Borrowed Time" reflects on mortality and gratitude with the ease of a man genuinely at peace with the passage of time. The album closes with its most emotionally devastating pairing: Ono's "Let Me Count the Ways" and Lennon's "Grow Old with Me," both based on Robert and Elizabeth Browning poems and intended as the album's emotional centerpiece — the latter recorded as a bare bedroom demo with just Lennon's voice and acoustic piano, a sketch that transcends its own unfinished state to become one of the most affecting things he ever recorded. As PopMatters observed, Milk and Honey finds Lennon "in a happy state of mind — which is not a bad way to end a story at all."