Imagine; John Lennon

Imagine, composed and performed by John Lennon, was first released in 1971. It was reissued after the year of his death in 1980. The first time it was released the song was moderately a hit, but it became largely famous after its release. It is a pop/rock/Ballad song, for the duration of 3:15 minutes.   

This verse is built around the keys of C and F. The only thing that makes the song interesting is the change of lengths in the notes, variation in melody. There were only a few instruments used, for example bass, drum kit and piano. He also kept the song fairly simple. The reason being the he knew sooner or later he would need to perform the song live, and he hadn’t performed for quite a long time since ‘The Beatles’ had broken up, so he kept it as simple as possible for himself.

This song has a very interesting structure; it is by far a very strange one. He starts the song with the chorus, refrain (a melody that keeps coming back), chorus, refrain, middle 8, chorus and ends on the middle 8. The song has no verses, at all. The middle 8 is 8 bars whereas the refrains are 16 bars. The strings are introduced when the refrain comes in, and drums and bass are introduced when the chorus comes in the second time.

The note ‘Imagine’ is, B, on is the money note as well as the hook. As it is repeated several times and is on a higher note than the others, it sticks into people’s minds and is quite effective. It is also effective as it is the song title.

The song is written in second person, with the lyrics being very descriptive. The whole song paints a fantastic image of a perfect world, which could be created. Although the song overall describing a perfect world, it has a hidden message behind it, for example ‘Imagine there’s no religion, it isn’t hard to do,’ is like a form of statement referring to the fact that religion isn’t real and a bit strange; people are just blindly following things that are fiction. Through the nice words, he is almost insulting the society for being so arrogant towards many things in life. This is another way he makes the song very personal, other than writing it in second person.

There isn’t very strong rhyme in the song, but there a few rhyming couplets every second line i.e. the second and forth last words would rhyme, a half rhyme or full strong rhyme.

In my point of view, this song is written in a very clever way. As John Lennon knew he could not take his rage and annoyance towards the society out directly towards them, he decided to do in a way they wouldn’t realise. The actual message behind the song is very interesting. Overall I really enjoy listening to the song and believe Lennon used quite a few simple tricks which really helped him create an overall interesting song. 

Afsheen Butt