John Lennon - Imagine

"Imagine" is a song written and performed by English musician John Lennon. It was released as a single from his album Imagine in 1971, and was released as a single in the United Kingdom in 1975 in conjunction with the album Shaved Fish. It was inspired by a poem from Yoko Ono's 1964 book Grapefruit.

The song received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award and is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll; it was ranked the 3rd greatest song of all time by Rolling Stonein its "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".^[1]

The song's central theme was inspired by "Cloud Piece", a three-line instructional poem that appeared in Ono's 1964 book Grapefruit. The words were reproduced on the back cover of the Imaginealbum.^[2]

In a 1980 interview with David Sheff for Playboy magazine, Lennon commented on the message of "Imagine":

Sheff: On a new album, you close with "Hard Times Are Over (For a While)". Why?
Lennon: It's not a new message: "Give Peace a Chance"—we're not being unreasonable. Just saying "give it a chance." With "Imagine" we're asking, "can you imagine a world without countries or religions?" It's the same message over and over. And it's positive.^[3]

A panel from the Imagine Peace Tower, whose design was inspired by the song.

Ono indicated that the lyrical content of "Imagine" was "just what John believed—that we are all one country, one world, one people. He wanted to get that idea out."^[1] In addition, the content of "Imagine" was inspiration for the concept of Nutopia: The Country of Peace, created in 1973. Lennon included a symbolically mute "anthem" to this country on his album Mind Games. The inspiration for Ono's Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland came from words in the second verse: "Imagine all the people living life in peace."

In the book Lennon in America, by Geoffrey Giuliano, Lennon commented that Imagine was an "anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic [song], but because it's sugar-coated, it's accepted."^[4]

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