Who wrote Imagine?

Imagine, John Lennon’s most famous song, was voted “Britain’s favorite song of all time.” It is an idealistic song about peace and the hope for a better world. “Imagine all the people living life in peace.” The song was a big hit in 1971, and again in 1980 after Lennon was murdered in New York. It became a hit for a third time after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001

But who really wrote the song? Until recently the answer to this question was always John Lennon. But on a TV program this week, Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono, spoke for the first time about how she, in fact, helped write the song.

Ono said that the idea and inspiration for Imagine came from some of her poems that John Lennon was reading at that time. The poems began with the word imagine: “Imagine a raindrop, Imagine a goldfish.” Ono said, “when I was a child in Japan during the Second World War, my brother and I were terribly hungry. I imagined delicious menus for him, and he began to smile. If you think something is impossible, you can imagine it and make it happen.”

In an interview just before he died, Lennon admitted that Yoko deserved credit for Imagine. He said, “a lot of it - the lyrics and the concept - came from her, from her book of poems, imagine this, imagine that. “Lennon said that he was “too macho” to share the credit with her at the time.

Ono said that part of the song was written when they were flying across the Atlantic, and the rest was written on the piano in their bedroom at their home in England. Ono said, “The song speaks about John’s dream for the world. It was something he really wanted to say.” Imagine became a popular song for peace activists everywhere.

In March 2002 the airport in his home town of Liverpool was renamed John Lennon Airport. A sign above the main entrance has a line from Imagine: “Above us only sky.”