Imagine Mosaic at Central Park. Photo by Erin Song on Unsplash
C to a brief Cmaj7, resolving to an F followed by a gentle three-note chromatic run before resolving back to a C and repeating. It’s music speak, yes. But when you hear the first few measures of John Lennon’s “Imagine” on a piano, you instantly recognize it. The song was far and away Lennon’s biggest solo hit, selling an estimated 8.3 million records. Hundreds of major recording artists have covered the song from Ray Charles to Lady Gaga. This year, the Library of Congress selected the now 52-year-old song to be preserved forever in the National Recording Registry.
So how did such a controversial song become one of the most well-known, and universally beloved songs of all time?
The Story Behind “Imagine”
In 1971, John Lennon sat down at his Steinway piano and finished a bit he’d been playing with since the Beatles’ Let It Be sessions in 1969. With inspiration drawn from Yoko’s poetry and art, as well as from a prayer book that had been gifted to the two of them by a friend, comedian Dick Gregory. What would follow is arguably the greatest anthem for humanism the world has ever heard. It paints a picture of no religion, no materialism, no wars, only unity.
Later Lennon would identify this vision as Nutopia, a theoretical place where mankind doesn’t get bogged down by what he saw as the evils of the modern world- things like possessions, money, and judgment. This was essentially the humanist ideal. Incidentally, he was on the verge of deportation at the time, so crafting a theoretical country of which he was an ambassador was at least a little strategic.
The song would go on to top charts globally, hitting #3 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart (behind Cher’s “Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves” and Isaac Hayes’ “Theme from Shaft”) and securing a top spot in Australia, Canada, and other nations. But the commercial success is really not the story of the song.
The Whole Point of Imagine (In Lennon’s Words)
Though some through the years have criticized it mostly for its perceived atheist message, the ask is simple: Imagine.
Lennon never explicitly says there is not a heaven or hell, or that there is no god, or even that there should or shouldn’t be. Similarly, no explicit claims are made about materialism, another strong theme in the song. He only asks to “Imagine there’s no heaven.”
In an interview with Playboy Magazine in 1980, he said “‘Imagine’, which says: ‘Imagine that there was no more religion, no more country, no more politics,’ is virtually the Communist Manifesto, even though I’m not particularly a Communist and I do not belong to any movement.”
It’s hard to “imagine” a song releasing today that could challenge the status quo in such a meaningful way and still enjoy any comparable amount of success as “Imagine” has.
Is It Enough To Just… Imagine?
Yes. And no.
Taking a critical look at the lyrics to “Imagine” as a possible world in which we could live is, for the most part, for the birds. We’re not giving up our possessions, the church certainly isn’t going anywhere, and wars will continue as long as there are enough humans who disagree. But that was never the goal, was it? The whole idea of Nutopia was little more than a joke in reality. No organization was ever really going to respect Lennon’s ambassadorship to his made up country and he and Yoko knew it.
But the ideas behind it were always real. The idea that we can unite together and try and see a better future, no matter how bleak things are now- that matters. The idea that we should all take a step back from time to time and ask if we’re all moving in the right direction or if we’re all just stuck in our ways- that matters. And encouraging all of us to really examine our lives and, by extension, ourselves is perhaps the most meaningful impact a song can have on humanity.
On the surface, the lyrics seem to hearken of a place that never really was, a place you could seek all your life and you’ll never find. It all seems so wide-eyed and naive. And that’s fine, because the whole point of the song is not to build that world, only to imagine it. And that’s a start.