Now and Then finds a place alongside Beatles’ songs like We Can Work it Out or Girl which move between major-key and minor-key sections. A still from the song’s video.
(YouTube)
For their “last single” Now and Then, the remaining 2023 Beatles kept John Lennon’s chorus, but changed where it fell. This necessary “repair” meant losing some of Lennon’s most touching passages.
The Beatles have released a new track - using new technology to strip Lennon’s vocals out of an old demo casette tape. Will this be part of Beatles canon?
Released on September 9, 1971, the power of Imagine has not diluted. It is the song many turn to at times of crisis: from Neil Young after 9/11 to a pianist on the streets of Paris in 2015.
Greatest pop songwriting team ever?
United States Library of Congress
John Lennon’s Revolution was panned by the radical media as a ‘petty bourgeois cry of fear’ in 1968. Then, in 1987 it was claimed by Nike to be the controversial soundtrack of its most seminal advert.
A top hit in 1975, Neil Sedaka’s song “The Immigrant,” proves its continuing relevance, with the rise in xenophobia in the United States. Here people on an Atlantic Liner arrive at what is probably Ellis Island, the gateway for over 12 million immigrants to the U.S. from 1892 to 1954.
Library of Congress
Neil Sedaka’s song “The Immigrant” was a top hit in 1975, but today it seems even more relevant, as debates rage in the United States over immigration, repatriation and racism.
From outright celebration, through charity to explicit political salvos – is there such a thing as the ‘ultimate’ Christmas pop song?
On Dec. 23, 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono went to Parliament Hill in Ottawa to meet Pierre Trudeau. The Canadian prime minister was the only world leader to meet with the peace activists.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Peter Bregg)
John Lennon and Yoko Ono visited Canada on a peace mission: They met with leaders and asked difficult questions, relevant today. How do we effectively protest against social injustices and war?
Anita Palllenberg and Mick Jagger in Performance, 1969.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne