Nearly half a century after John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ was released, his widow Yoko Ono will finally be listed as a co-writer.
The announcement was made as the 1971 ode to world peace was declared “song of the century” at a National Music Publishers Association gala in New York recently. As Ono and her son Sean Lennon came up to receive a trophy, the association announced unexpectedly that Ono would join John Lennon on the songwriting credits.
The gala even played a BBC interview with John Lennon in 1980, shortly before he was assassinated, in which he said that ‘Imagine’ was inspired by the lines in Ono’s conceptual art book Grapefruit. “’Imagine’ should have been credited as a Lennon/Ono song. If it had been anyone other than my wife I would have given them credit,” John Lennon said.
Sean Lennon later wrote on social media that the announcement was the “proudest day of my life”.
Ono herself was an established avant-garde artist when she met Lennon, collaborated closely with him and has sought to preserve his legacy since his passing.
Ono had a well-publicised feud with Beatle Paul McCartney over songwriting credits. The Beatles generally signed songs as Lennon-McCartney, with the longtime friends sharing credit for some of music’s all-time hits. After the group broke up McCartney began to flip the order to McCartney-Lennon in songs on which he said he took the lead, raising objections from Ono.
