Just IMAGINE

This week, I chose to analyze one of my all time favorite songs, Imagine, by the one and only John Lennon. As I was listening to the “throwback” playlist on my Ipod earlier this week, I came across the song, and after replaying it about 5 times and dissecting the lyrics, I felt inspired to examine the song in more depth.

John-Lennon-Imagine

Imagine is quite different from the modern pop music we are probably attuned to hearing by now. Ranked third in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, “Imagine” is a universal anthem for world peace. Although the lyrics are simple and seem straight-forward, I think its simplicity is perhaps its most powerful asset. The message of the song is highly profound in meaning and the lyrics have been interpreted in a skew of ways.

 

For those who have not heard the song or are unfamiliar with the lyrics, feel free to check it out: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/johnlennon/imagine.html  

Now, from what I’ve heard, Imagine is considered to be the “international peace ballad,” and it is pretty obvious why. With lyrics such as  “Imagine all the people living in peace”, “Imagine all the people sharing all the world,”  “I hope some day you’ll join us and the world will live as one,” and a “brotherhood of man”, I’m positive that even a 5 year old could tell you that the song was aimed to encourage peace of some sort. What many people may not know is what the “peace” was for. After doing some independent research, I found that the song was actually written during the height of the Vietnam War and thus, many people see it as a call to promote peaceful relations and cooperation amongst the countries and prevent growth of the war.

When I first heard the song and listened to the lyrics, I viewed it as a sweet, simple song advocating world peace, brotherhood and freedom from suffering and discrimination. You have to admit it’s hard to miss such a basic message when the lyrics are so unambiguous. After further examination, I realized that the song expressed a message deeper than peace. It is really asking the listener to give up on discrimination based on ethnicity, social class, religion, and nationalism. Through the lines “imagine no religion” and imagine no countries,” John Lennon is basically trying to express the key message that prejudices can be eradicated if we stop believing in categories that separate people. For example, most wars are fought largely due to religious beliefs, nationalism, or battle over territory. If we didn’t have countries separating us or we could all practice religious tolerance, would these wars even happen? Furthermore, when people have an unequal share of wealth, it leads to greed, power struggles, and hunger. Thus by “imagining no possessions”, Lennon is trying to get us to imagine a happier world in which people share equal power.

Believe it or not; however, not everyone interprets Imagine as a “peace anthem,” despite the clear-cut lyrics. In fact, I was strangely fascinated to discover that many people actually correlate the song to Communism. Out of all things, Communism? Seriously? I don’t know about you, but Communism and peace do not exactly go hand in hand in my book. So why do people view this song as “Communistic?” By imagining a world with “no more religion, no more countries, and no more politics,” John Lennon himself said that the song was virtually the Communist manifesto. By imagining no heaven, hell, religion and politics, people believe he is shooting down religion and political systems, two of the major tenets of Communism.

Ultimately, interpret the song as you will. Some envision it as the “Communistic utopia”, but I prefer to think of it as just a beautiful tune full of pie-in-the-sky ideas for a better, united, and more peaceful world.

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1 Comment on Just IMAGINE

  1. Yixuan Wang
    February 26, 2015 at 5:14 pm (9 years ago)

    After reading the lyrics, I’ve got to say, that sounds like a nice idea – world peace. In some ways, I can see the idea of communism. After all communism is promoting equality for all. However, in some ways, this set of lyrics made me slightly depressed because while this imagined world sounds so good, this is unrealistic. By imagining how there are no countries or possessions, this reminds me of how greedy humans can be and ow they need some sort of restraint because not everyone is thinking of others…

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