The Best Songs Ever Recorded By Anyone Ever: John Lennon's "Imagine"

I am AOK with you hating this song. Between the original video from 1972 and the notorious all-star clip Gal Gadot offered social media at the beginning of the COVID lockdown in 2020, John Lennon’s “Imagine” has long been stained by association with clueless celebrity vanity. To hear the track in a more forgiving context requires ignoring the asininity of the glamorous, culturally empowered and absurdly wealthy across multiple decades. You’re free to hate a ditty just because of a repeated high note, so you’re sure as shit free to hate one because it reminds you of a self-enamored cultural elite who believe their mere visage improves the lives of commoners.

If you haven’t seen the original video for “Imagine,” it opens with John Lennon and Yoko Ono slowly traipsing up to their palatial country home in Berkshire County, England. Eventually, Lennon arrives at a giant white grand piano, playing the song for us as Ono opens the shutters on some rather grand windows. Eventually she sits beside him, and the video ends with a freeze-frame of them smooching. While they aren’t served tea until a later clip from the video album (yes, they made an entire movie of this stuff), one could be forgiven for thinking these assholes were profoundly high on several supplies. Did Lennon seriously not see the irony in representing utopian socialism in such a undeniably posh, isolated context? Is the grand piano the only thing in the room so he could claim “I said no possessions. One ostentatious piece of furniture is ok, and real estate doesn’t count”? And while Lennon eventually admitted the lyrics came largely from one of Ono’s poems, was she initially cool with the slight as long as she got screen time?

(To be clear, I think Yoko Ono is a very respectable conceptual artist who still gets a lot of dismissive sexist, racist flack in less hep corners of the public sphere. I would also like to affirm that if a close co-worker of yours suddenly demanded their significant other always be present at their side at meetings, insisting you encourage them to contribute to your long established collaborative process, you’d be within your rights to flip the fuck out at this transparent codependency and likely passive-aggressive behavior. Even if their significant other is a very respectable conceptual artist.)

So, yeah. I get it if you assume the “you” in the song is everyone watching the video and “us” is John & Yoko. When Neil Young covered the song after 9/11, he changed “I wonder if you can” to “I wonder if I can,” subtly acknowledging how much he’s enjoyed owning big-ass ranches, classic cars and dubious tech start-ups. It’s a level of humility and self-awareness nobody involved with that Gadot fiasco showed, even if a couple of those confused celebrity contributors claimed selfie-taker’s remorse once a cooped-up planet got to dunking on them.

While I appreciate the thought Neil brought to his cover, I think he was overcompensating. The lyric doesn’t ask you to give up your antique train sets or decades of archival recordings waiting to be digitized. It doesn't ask you to live like religion, materialism and nationalism don't exist, but to imagine a world where they don’t. It’s about realizing how much of what’s valued over our collective humanity is chosen by us as a people, or for us. 

For all the unapologetic egoism of the John & Yoko cultural experience (it’s not like leading Side A of Imagine with the title track kept Lennon from telling Paul McCartney to kiss his ass on Side B), egoism is not what I hear when I listen to “Imagine.” I hear something much sadder and more desperate. Lennon called it a prayer, but I’d call it a plea. I hear a challenge to those who clearly can’t imagine life without possessions and borders, and have no desire to. A challenge to those who commit or ignore atrocities in the name of achieving power or maintaining power. Those who wouldn’t hesitate to kill to protect a world vision that promises only varying speeds of death and dehumanization.

When I hear those piano chords, I don’t hear a celebrity patting himself on the back and questioning if you can handle his big ideas. I hear something closer to XTC’s “Dear God,” only this time the bespectacled Brit feeling heartbroken & impotent over the ugliness of the world knows the makers exist, and that they’re human like him. They’re probably not taking prayers, but maybe they’ll at least hear this one if it’s catchy enough. If it gets out there, he’ll at least know they’ve been told it doesn’t have to be this way. And lest you mistake it for an anthem of piety, rather than hope, he lets himself enjoy the word “you.” Because he’s not just sharing concepts, but the crucial moments of joy & optimism they can provide. Despite how “Imagine” has been misused and manhandled by its creators and countless since, that’s still what I get from it.