Imagine

Sealed brand new 180 gram repressing of this iconic album. Made in Germany.

Imagine is the second studio album by John Lennon. Recorded and released in 1971, the album is more heavily produced in contrast to the basic, raw arrangements of his previous album, the critically acclaimed John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.^[1] The album is considered the most popular of his works and the title track is considered one of Lennon's finest songs. In 2012, Imagine was voted 80th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".^[2]

Imagine was written and recorded during a period of particularly bad feeling between Lennon and former bandmate Paul McCartney,^[8] following The Beatles' break-up the year before and McCartney winning his case in the High Court to have their legal partnership dissolved.^[3] Harrison guested on half of Imagine 's ten tracks, including the brutal "How Do You Sleep?" − a song written in retaliation against McCartney's alleged personal attacks on Lennon and Ono, on his recent Ram album.^[9][10] Although Lennon softened his stance in the mid '70s and claimed he wrote "How Do You Sleep?" about himself, he revealed in 1980: "I used my resentment against Paul ... to create a song ... not a terrible vicious horrible vendetta ... I used my resentment and withdrawing from Paul and The Beatles, and the relationship with Paul, to write 'How Do You Sleep?'. I don't really go 'round with those thoughts in my head all the time ..."^[11]

The track "Imagine" became Lennon's signature song and was written as a plea for world peace. Years later he gave credit to his wife Yoko Ono who co-wrote the song. "Jealous Guy" has also had enduring popularity; it was originally composed as "Child of Nature" during the songwriting sessions in India in 1968 that led to The Beatles' double album The Beatles.^[12] "Oh My Love" and the song "How?" were influenced by his experience with primal therapy: "How?" contains the questions he was facing while going through the changes produced in him during the ongoing process of primal therapy, while "Oh My Love" was written to communicate the joy and growth Lennon was experiencing as a result of the therapy.

Lennon also indulged his love of rock and roll with "Crippled Inside" and "It's So Hard". "Gimme Some Truth", originally heard during the Let It Be sessions in early 1969, appears on the album with a new bridge. The politically themed "I Don't Want to Be a Soldier" closes the first half of Imagine in a cacophonous manner. The last song on the album was "Oh Yoko!"; EMI pushed for this track to be the single, but Lennon thought it was too "pop".^[11]