Posted on 07/22/2017 6:06:48 AM PDT by rktman
For the last 15 years, I have been making good educational use of Lennon's famous song "Imagine." In one of my classes, analyzing the song helps Japanese students think critically about song lyrics. The song is very well known and popular in Japan, in part because Lennon's wife was Japanese. Yoko Ono's leftist beliefs also left their mark on the content of the song, a fact that will probably soon receive official recognition by the National Music Publishers Association.
The song's doubtful assumptions and internal contradictions make it an instructive instance of the sloppy, shallow thinking we often find in the world of mass entertainment, which unfortunately then goes unfiltered into the minds of countless consumers. Eventually, my students do an assignment in which they critique songs of their own choosing in short presentations. Not long ago, one student offered us her own critique of a Japanese pop song titled "World Peace," which calls for the extermination of the human race in order to achieve true peace on planet Earth in view of humanity's crimes against the environment. The student remarked on the strange notion of a peaceful world with no humans around to enjoy it. She had evidently not yet heard of some strains of extreme environmentalism.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
If only he’s imagined a bulletproof vest.
nah that would be the Internationale
I can't imagine ever being so desperate for "company" that I'd want to get with 500 yards of *that*!
You are mistaken. Paul is dead. Have you ever listened to a Wings album?
If only he had imagined obeying any one of the scores of deportation orders the INS issued against him....
Yup,he was a wetback...
Yes. He displays a low IQ in his lyrics. I’ve always called McCartney a tune-ster.
Exactly. There are those that understand music and appreciate a good composition, and those that only care about the meaning of the words in the song. You can’t look at music that way. If you focus solely on the meaning behind the words, you would find yourself listening to nothing but instrumentals.
I agree with you that musically, "Imagine" is a good tune.
As a formally trained and formerly professional musician, I (like you) tend not to care much about lyrics, or even notice them.
Nevertheless, I have always found the lyrics to "Imagine" to be particularly obnoxious. Maybe it's because in 1970 when that tune came out, I was a sophomore in college and had only just discovered conservatism (initially through reading Ayn Rand).
So given my then newly discovered passion for conservative political philosophy -- especially in the face of the suddenly ubiquitous New Left (and SDS in particular) -- I did listen to Lennon's lyrics, and found them disgustingly offensive and hypocritical. They offended my life-long love of America, my growing dedication to the principles of liberty and free markets, and my outrage at watching my peers (and professors) run around praising Che Guevera and quoting endlessly from Mao Zedong's "Little Red Book."
So my loathing of the "Imagine" lyrics has always over-shadowed my appreciation for the underlying melody and chord changes.
"From a musical standpoint" it's an utter POS.
Two chords played over and over, with two other chords thrown in from time to time.
Most lyrical music is just a repeat of a few chords. It isn’t just the chords, its how the song is sung to the chords to form the melodies and harmonies. The meaning of the words are crap, but how they are sung with the chords make a good tune.
Don't care for the needle prick, but everything else is good . . .
Imagine there's no nothing....
Even if you could....
Nothing to enjoy or plan for.....
Nothing anywhere at all.....
Imagine all the (stupid) people......living life with nothing.....
Oo, ooh, ooohooh
They like it just that way. Well-packaged propaganda.
If Lennon thought “no possessions” were such a good thing, why didn’t he give away his own possessions?
...
Probably because Imagine is just a song and most people, including the author only care what it sounds like. The words are little more than sounds that go along in harmony with the sounds of the instruments. I recently read that when “Imagine” was music only, Lennon was excited because he thought he’d written a melody equal to McCartney’s “Yesterday,” which was called “scrambled eggs” before McCartney came up with the actual lyrics.
And the song Revolution.
Most people, the masses, do not care. This is a problem, don't you think? Entertainment has the overall effect of weakening a people, the most of them.
"We're conservative { uhh } but progressive"
--Banksteress Poodle Herder/Archeeetect
"I do not like the reappearance of the Jesuits....
Shall we not have regular swarms of them here, in as many disguises as only a king
of the gipsies can assume, dressed as printers, publishers, writers and schoolmasters?
If ever there was a body of men who merited damnation on earth and in Hell,
it is this society of Loyola’s.
Nevertheless, we are compelled by our system of religious toleration
to offer them an asylum."--John Adams to Thomas Jefferson; May, 1816
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