Home » Revolution and lyrics: personal change versus structural change

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Revolution and lyrics: personal change versus structural change — 52 Comments

  1. I’ve always really disliked the song “Imagine”. I find the lyrical content to be both vague, mawkish, and insipid and yet so many other people revere it as this amazingly important and influential song. The melody itself is agreeable and the sentiment itself is nice, if a bit puerile I guess. If it was just a nice little deep cut diddy buried on the b-side of an album somewhere I probably wouldn’t dislike it so much. And also knowing how Lennon personally was sort of a dick to his first wife and first son certainly didn’t help my assesment of the song’s lyrical content.

  2. I think songs probably reinforce attitudes already there e.g. “We are the world”, “Imagine”, “Give peace a chance”. Excuse me, after writing just the titles, I feel nauseous.

  3. “Influence” is a tricky word. As the jester from “American Pie” said:
    _______________________________

    Open up yer eyes an’ ears an’ yer influenced
    an’ there’s nothing you can do about it.

    –Bob Dylan
    _______________________________

    Maybe you don’t convert to Christianity, when you hear “Amazing Grace” or to New Age socialist pacifism, when you hear “Imagine,” but they go into your brain and literally change your neural connections nonetheless

    And maybe someday those changes add up to a big change. You never can tell.

  4. From what I understand a lot of the lyrics and meaning in ‘Imagine’ is really Yoko Ono. Lennon was a very complicated person who defied ideological categorization.

  5. Lennon’s best “commie” song is Working Class Hero. I’m a conservative but I can see his point.
    There’s room at the top they are telling you still
    But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
    If you want to be like the folks on the hill
    A working class hero is something to be
    A working class hero is something to be

  6. For all the reasons mentioned here, “Imagine” is execrable. However, there’s one version of I like, but even that’s a guilty pleasure:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asAx6-inGLk

    Is the Cuban artist here like good old Yevtushenko back in the day, who said something like, “There should be no borders!” And all we, in the West, could think was, “Yeah, like no Ukraine borders, no Lithuanian borders, no West German borders, etc.” Is Rubalcaba saying, “If y’all would just give in to Socialism, there would be no conflict between us?” Probably. That’s why it’s a guilty pleasure.

  7. Lennon’s politics were, let us say, fluid.

    At the time of “Revolution” and “Imagine,” he was more of personal transformation guy. Later, he hooked up with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and Lennon became New Left radical, as ‘not the walrus’ points out with “Working Class Hero.”

  8. I wouldn’t be the best judge of that, but this page about “Imagine” calls it “one of the most influential songs of the 20th Century.”

    A great deal of onanism to be found in discussions of the work of rock-and-roll bands. Seeing the younger men go at it among what comes over our Facebook wall (and the ‘younger men’ in our set are now around 40), one has to wonder why, say, traditional pop or adult contemporary doesn’t provoke this sort of one-upping discussion.

  9. Lennon’s politics were, let us say, fluid.

    John Derbyshire wrote of his father (a repo man by trade) that he was a militant atheist, saw a red under every bed, and thought the government should be run by a board of successful businessmen. “Of course, he always voted Labour”. John Lennon had a rare talent he was willing and able to develop; that aside, he was Joe Blow off the sidewalks of Liverpool and (by some accounts) failed all his ‘O’ level examinations. Conceptual thinking wasn’t his thing.

  10. Also, I suggest bearing in mind how insane Lennon’s life had been, first as a Beatle and therefore, one of most suddenly famous, sought-after people in the world for a decade, then as a person who took vast amounts of LSD plus joining various cultish parades like Transcendental Meditation and Primal Scream therapy, with a side detour into heroin.

    By the time he wrote “Imagine” Lennon wasn’t crazy, but he was by no means a normal, rational person.

    Take a gander at the original “Imagine” video:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ72bYyEtBg

    John and Yoko are clothed in white, walking through a dream-like world of fog. No other people. Then they enter a pure white room with a white piano. John starts playing and Yoko starts opening all the draped windows to let the sunlight in.

    This isn’t a political statement. It’s a dream message from the 30th Century.

  11. FWIW Rick Beato was so entranced by Lennon’s piano work on “Imagine” that Beato included the song on his list of greatest keyboard something or others. (Don’t recall which.)

    I was impressed that Lennon could play piano well enough to perform on it.

  12. huxley,

    The melody is really beautiful but the lyrics are so ridiculous it absolutely ruins the song.

    I think Lennon wrote quite a few songs on the piano because he wasn’t a great guitarist either. Lennon was an amazing lyricist but he was no match for McCartney as a musician. McCartney is genius level when it comes to melody.

  13. “Imagine” appeals to those unwilling to accept reality.

    As for how influential, I think it likely that there are individuals who embrace it as their personal anthem.

    Generationally is another matter. I remember reading of an incident at the gathering at Paul McCartney’s mansion for George Harrison’s wake. There were guards in place at the gated entrance to the estate checking attendees against the guest list. There was also a small crowd nearby. A large limo pulled up with darkened windows. One of the rear windows rolled down, a guard leaned close to look inside and jerked back, surprise on his face, who instantly waved the limo forward for immediate entrance. As the limo pulled through, the guard turned to a couple of young teenaged girls and excitedly said, “do you know who that was? Ringo!”

    Puzzled, the girls looked at him and replied, “who’s ringo?”

  14. the guard turned to a couple of young teenaged girls and excitedly said, “do you know who that was? Ringo!” Puzzled, the girls looked at him and replied, “who’s ringo?”

    The youths in question, presumably born ca. 1985, are hanging about the sidewalks around Paul McCartney’s residence but don’t know who lives there or the names of his band mates?

  15. I’ve lost my taste for “Imagine” as an anthem as well. However, I don’t agree with the extreme dumping.

    As far as I’m concerned, the lyrics or their sentiments, except for the atheism, could have appeared in the Bible, the Gospel of Thomas, William Blake’s or Walt Whitman’s work, or in Eastern scriptures and no one would bat an eye.
    ________________________________

    Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can. No need for greed or hunger. A brotherhood of man.
    ________________________________

    Research the monastic traditions all over the world.

  16. I’ve remarked before on the irony of a song with the line “And no religion, too” as it’s centerpiece becoming the fundamental hymn of the modern liberal religion.

  17. I first became aware of “Imagine” when it was played as a theme at a friend’s wedding in 1987. I instantly despised it but didn’t try to put into words why.

    Many years later, I encountered Andrew Klavan’s summing up on the song as “the philosophy of a cow,” and that’s stuck in my mind — it seemed about right.

    Now I see that it was from an Uncommon Knowledge interview of Klavan, and a fuller quote is “This song, this jangly ditty that I despise, John Lennon’s ‘Imagine,’ this idea that if we could just get rid of all the things that make us human, we wouldn’t have to fight. Well that’s true, but it’s the philosophy of a cow. You sit and you have nothing to love, nothing to bring out the best in yourself.”

  18. Good grief!

    So if someone writes in the Bible or on a Christmas card:

    Peace on Earth
    Good Will to Men
    Feed the Hungry, Clothe the Naked
    Thou Shalt Not Covet
    Love Your Neighbor
    We Are One

    That’s admirable, beautiful, even God’s Will.

    If John Lennon writes such terrible things in a pop song, Let the Wailing and the Gnashing of Teeth Begin!

  19. About that time there was a folky about the mountain people keeping a treasure. The valley people wanted the treasure so they killed the mountain people. The treasure…”Peace On Earth” was all it said.”
    Not sure what it was supposed to demonstrate but the mountain people were all dead……
    From time to time, and not so long ago as these things run, somebody would say something inane and refer as an argument back to “Imagine” as if it were some kind of solid description of how things were, or how they would work if only….. Kind of a lame argument from authority.

    That said, this and “American Pie” made me grateful for push-button station changing on the car radio.

    I have said more than is welcome around here, I suspect, that I never liked pop music of the times. But the Beatles were passable party music until they went to India and got spiritual. I guess I was an old grump even in high school. I recall age mates buying it, if only for a few years after which, I presume, they’ve moved on.

    There’s more wisdom on the subject in “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies” than in a hundred pop songs.

    Talking to my fourteen year old granddaughter about where my father and uncles were in WW II. “Your poor grandparents,” she burst out. “Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier” is all you need. Or “Danny Boy”.

  20. Well pop music is mostly dreck; the trick is always the hook. Almost always there is no “there” in there.

    The current rap hit “Let’s go Brandon” on the other hand …..

  21. Scott. Thanks. Seems the lesson is so clear it must be kind of a prank or something. “peace on earth” is your treasure and you end up dead. But the song doesn’t make being dead obviously a virtue or a preferred end state.

    According to the Bible, when a strong man, armed, guardeth his palace, his goods are in peace. Sounds like it covers all the bases when the neolithic are facing the pastoralists.

  22. Mostly I find songs reinforce and heighten the moods that I’m already in or inclined to. I don’t recall one ever affecting my worldview. As to Imagine, it was used in a transcendent moment on the TV series Quantum Leap. https://vimeo.com/19174318. One of my favorite scenes ever. The main character is from the future inhabiting his teenage self and trying to convince his family some 30 years earlier that he really is from the future and wants to warn them about tragic events to come in their lives. You see his little sister who has treated it all as a game to humor him, start to believe when she hears a song she recognizes as Lennon’s but one not written yet.

  23. If Jordan Peterson was influenced by “Imagine,” it was likely a counter influence.

    Yet imagine remains a bumper sticker to anarchists of a certain age.

  24. “Imagine” – and I am old enough to remember when it was first released – is and always was a “garbage” song.

    The music doesn’t grate on me like the lyrics do. The lyrics really bother me; especially the “nothing to live or die for” – WTH?! “nothing”? really nothing to live or die for?

    Even though I was in elementary school when it was first release I felt it was sad that someone thought there was no one or nothing to make life worth living for or no one or nothing worth fighting and, possibly, dying for. How sad for Lennon; such an empty, shallow, life.

    And, now that I am older I can see if he truly believed in the lyrics of “Imagine” how he so easily tossed his wife and son aside while he chased after the avant-garde “artist” Yoko Ono. Yep, he was shallow.

    And while I don’t like Yoko Ono’s “art.” I do believe in giving her a lot of credit for not just donating “Strawberry Fields” to New York City; but, for also giving money so that it could be maintained.

    “Revolution” on the other hand I can agree with. The very lyrics that you, Neo, have quoted are exactly the words/ideas people should ask. In sum; what is YOUR plan Mr. Politician?

  25. Many years later, I encountered Andrew Klavan’s summing up on the song as “the philosophy of a cow,” and that’s stuck in my mind — it seemed about right.

    Paul Nachman:

    I doubt Klavan realizes it, but he is basically taking Nietzsche’s side in N.’s Master-Slave argument against Christianity.
    __________________________________

    In “Beyond Good and Evil,” Nietzsche (1844-1900 CE) detects two types of morality mixed not only in higher civilization but also in the psychology of the individual.

    Master-morality values power, nobility, and independence: it stands “beyond good and evil.” Slave-morality values sympathy, kindness, and humility and is regarded by Nietzsche as “herd-morality.”

    The history of society, Nietzsche believes, is the conflict between these two outlooks: the herd attempts to impose its values universally, but the noble master transcends their “mediocrity.”

    –“Slave and Master Morality (From Chapter IX of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil)”
    https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/slave-and-master-morality-by-nietzsche/

    __________________________________

    Cow … herd … exactly what Nietzsche was getting at and yes, he indicted Christianity specifically as a Slave morality.

    There is a reason Christians are so vulnerable to Leftist thinking and Lennon’s “Imagine” message is so Christian-sounding … minus the “no religion” line, of course.

    If I’m forced to choose, I’ll take Jesus over Nietzsche.

  26. ‘Imagine’ – a slow and boring song.
    Huxley,
    I haven’t been able to take Nietzsche seriously since ‘Blazing Saddles’.

  27. Oh, was he the Yiddish-speaking Indian? (It’s been a long time…)

    File under: Humor is dead…

  28. Always detested Imagine. But will say doubt I am much different than most in that a song can give me a feeling or a mood swing if I like it and know it’s message. So not surprised on Imagine’s ranking.

  29. A song I’ve always found inspirational is “Do It or Die” by the Atlanta Rhythm Section, a fairly well-known but IMHO vastly underrated 70s band assembled by producer/songwriter Buddy Buie in Doraville, Georgia. The late Ronnie Hammond was a first-rate vocalist and he gives this song a great reading. The simple, straightforward lyrics make the point that while life can be a struggle, it just keeps rolling on and you must stay true to yourself, ignore the nay-sayers, and always keep pushing forward. This is great advice for any situation in life. The song has this great line: “Go on and roll the dice, you only live twice, so do it or die”.
    BTW, the ARS recorded a wonderful, high voltage remake of the 60s hit by the Classics IV “Spooky” that is one of my all-time favorites. (Two members of ARS played in the Classics IV and guitarist JR Cobb co-wrote the song’s lyrics with Buie.) This was one tight band.

  30. I’ve always hated the song “Imagine.” It’s a silly, immature song that sounds like it could have been written by an eighth grader. Philosophically, it’s horrid. Honestly, though, in my experience, most people don’t pay much attention to the lyrics and don’t realize the song is promoting communism until you point it out.

    But “Revolution” is one of my favorite songs.

  31. Personally, I prefer Pete Townsend, probably a better musician and definitely a better political thinker.

    “Meet the New Boss… Same as the Old Boss”.

  32. I always thought of the Beatles as a mediocre pop band; not a real rock band like the Stone or Doors or The Who. “Imagine” is one of the most overrated songs. It vies with Sinatra’s “My Way” as the most overrated song. (Sinatra at least grew to hate that song.)

  33. I haven’t been able to take Nietzsche seriously since ‘Blazing Saddles’.

    Mollyt+Brown:

    Nietzsche is a base worth touching for understanding where Western Civ is these days and how we got here.

    The Master-Slave polarity he describes is a real choice and I find myself on both sides.

  34. Well, below are the lyrics to “Imagine.”
    What I can’t imagine is how anybody does not see it’s amazingly close utopian / communist vision as elucidated by Marx or Lenin et. al.

    No heaven, no religion (religion – the opiate of the people) , no countries, no possessions !! , the world as “one” (e.g., one world govt ?) , the world will live as one (really ? in which solar system is this world) ?.

    The lyrics perfectly describe the communist BS propaganda line used to persuade the non-thinking (and of course, “intellectuals” ) that a communist nation is synonymous with a utopia.

    It is a utopia for those at the top – they actually OWN everything. Funny, is it not, that it’s OK for them to have possessions.

    Anyway, here are the lyrics to Lennon’s communist manifesto;

    “Imagine there’s no heaven
    It’s easy if you try
    No hell below us
    Above us only sky
    Imagine all the people
    Living for today… Aha-ah…

    Imagine there’s no countries
    It isn’t hard to do
    Nothing to kill or die for
    And no religion, too
    Imagine all the people
    Living life in peace… You…

    You may say I’m a dreamer
    But I’m not the only one
    I hope someday you’ll join us
    And the world will be as one

    Imagine no possessions
    I wonder if you can
    No need for greed or hunger
    A brotherhood of man
    Imagine all the people
    Sharing all the world… You…

    You may say I’m a dreamer
    But I’m not the only one
    I hope someday you’ll join us
    And the world will live as one”

    You will note that Lennon did not divest himself of HIS possessions, nor was he known as a great philanthropist using his millions $$$$$ to help reduce hunger, poverty, etc.
    Like all lefties he was a hypocrite.

  35. I notice that the Pope and almost all Christian leaders and Christian followers haven’t divested themselves of their possessions either even though Jesus wasn’t keen on material possessions.

    Jesus was a dreamer too.

    Many Christians and Christian communities (the Pilgrims too) have attempted to live up to that ideal. It’s a tough one. See Acts of the Apostles.

    Nonetheless, the vision of humanity living in peace without greed or hunger is deeply embedded, for better or worse, in humanity. John Lennon is hardly the only person to express such a vision. Nor is he the only imperfect human among us.

    The power of Imagine’s lyrics is based on that vision and our deep Christian history.

  36. Personally I find it useful to understand things from the inside as well as the outside.

    That was no small part of how I shifted from the Left to the Right.

  37. huxley. The lesson of the lion and the lamb is also Christian. But I’ve never heard an argument for me being the lion in the picture. I mean, if it’s guaranteed to work, there’s no problem, right? Right? So why is it required I be the lamb? Can’t hurt if I’m the lion. Because it’s guaranteed.

    Since mutual disarmament is guaranteed to work, why should’t the other guy go first?

    Somehow, I have to be the lamb. I have to be the defenseless one. Said all the Christians I ever heard making the case.

    So while imagining all this stuff is a fun thing except for terminal boredom, its real world application concerns most folks. So, if the US disarms, the USSR will be so moved by the act, and so relieved by the disappearing threat, they’ll disarm and leave everybody alone. Damn’ near gospel thirty plus years ago. One of those things you can’t believe anybody actually believes.

    I’m not sure there’s a relationship, or a similarity, even. But answering NIMBY with HAYBY (How About Your Back Yard) frequently ends up with changing the subject. As in, “I get to be the lion, right?”

    The Pilgrims may have wanted something like, but they had to get through King Phillip’s War–killed ten percent of their men of military age–to get to the promised land. Oh, wait…..

  38. }}} If one did not know any better, you would think the lyrics were written by Karl Marx or Lenin.

    Nope. It sounds — if you listen to it — as though it were written by Satan, selling the virtues of Hell. Because those lyrics do describe Hell, no question:

    Nothing to kill or die for
    And no religion, too

    Nothing to kill or die for.

    No family, no friends.

    No art, no beauty, no possessions, no anything.

    Just a dull, grey, empty void with nothing but endless boredom and ennui to want death, but it never comes to you….

    Yeah, just Imagine that. :-/

  39. I thought you folks were like ,you know , “smart” ,,,any fule do know Forest Gump wrote imagine one nite on Carson.

  40. @ Richard Aubrey > “Come all you fair and tender ladies” is a hauntingly beautiful folk song which I learned early on in my musical journey, but don’t remember ever hearing on the radio.

    YouTube favored this recent posting by Saelkie Folk, which is very traditional in presentation:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e18CBYKu_zI
    “Lovely folk song with Irish roots which found its way to the Appalachian tradition.”

    I usually sing it much slower, with more of a plainsong-ballad interpretation (if I may coin such a descriptor).

    Bob Dylan recorded it in his “The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete” (the internet knows everything); Buffy St-Marie on “Many A Mile” but neither site linked to a YouTube audio.

    Discographies:
    https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/

    https://www.discogs.com/release/2214540-Buffy-Sainte-Marie-Many-A-Mile

  41. Aesopfan See this for some harmony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibn8zdOwjy8&t=150s

    Pernell Roberts, post-Bonanza, did some folk stuff including Fair etc. Good voice but, having talked to somebody with experience, he pronounces the terminal “arr” or “err”, instead of allowing one to hear it. I recall a guy doing “beautiful dreameuh”. You heard, in your head, the “err” but not the harsh vocalization.

    Picky picky.

    Thanks for the link.

  42. @ Richard > “See this for some harmony”

    Very nice. Much closer to the way I would sing it. The three-part harmony is very much in the Appalachian 18th-19th century tradition.
    Not surprisingly, you can hear the same “open” intervals in old-style Welsh Christmas Music, called “Carolau Plygain” (pr. carol-lye pluh-gine).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zwClDQ34hk
    The guy singing bass is Robin Huw Bowen, whose “day job” is as the leading practitioner of the Welsh Triple Harp. Look up some of his videos for a real treat.

    “Pernell Roberts, post-Bonanza, did some folk stuff including Fair etc.”

    News to me – I had no idea he had such a beautiful voice!
    Adam was always my favorite of the Cartwright sons.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRJ0cS975l8
    Bonus on this video are the lyrics; his version is much longer and somewhat different from the one I know, but that’s typical of folk songs.
    “In our village, we sing it THIS way.”

    There are a LOT of “r’s” in that first verse!
    The vocal criticism is generally spot on; the “imaginary r” was hammered into us by all my choir teachers. However, soloists and traditional singers are allowed some leeway, for idiosyncratic aesthetics, and Roberts is not hitting them excessively IMO, but just enough for his performance.

  43. Nothing to kill or die for
    And no religion, too

    Geez, people are working overtime to hate this song.

    Lennon was not in favor of a gray, boring world without love, beauty or relationships.

    He wanted a world at peace where you didn’t have to worry about you or yours having to kill or be killed in war, and instead could devote yourself happily to love, beauty and people.

    I sure would like to live in such a world. Wouldn’t you?

    As to religion, I would say Lennon opposed religious beliefs that led people to war, as has happened, and to abstract notions which can distract from the beauty of the here and now.

    He was also writing in the early 70s when it looked like recent history was nothing but war — WW I, Spanish Civil War, WW II, Cold War, Korean War, Vietnam War and the many smaller violent conflicts. Stopping war seemed particularly imperative because a nuclear WW III looked horrifyingly possible.

    Yes, Lennon had been radicalized with much leftist BS as many of us, including myself, had.

    However, I consider reducing Lennon and his song to cheerleading for hell to be as dishonest as the leftist fantasies of capitalism as the endless subjugation of the masses by fat cats in top hats.

  44. @ Aubrey > Clamavi de Profundus – the links went ever on and on.
    Ran them as background music for two days.

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