The song John Lennon refused to release as a single: “It’s a very popular track”
Any artist wants to reach the broadest audience possible whenever making one of their classics. It’s hard to get even one person to wrap their head around what you’re trying to do sometimes, but when thousands of people relate to the words you’re singing, it’s a gift to know that they heard something in the music that no one else recognised. While John Lennon had more than a few of his lyrics etched into the minds of Beatles fans around the world, he knew that some songs weren’t intended to be as big as ‘Hey Jude’ or ‘A Day In the Life.’
Before the band had even become mythologised, Lennon had already started to have a complicated relationship with his own fame. There were pieces of his songs that were being poured over like fine literature, and if there was any message that he was looking to send with ‘I Am The Walrus,’ it was the fact that people shouldn’t be looking at the finer details of every pop song that came on the radio.
Once The Beatles officially broke up, though, there were a lot of people who were bound to look at whatever came next as a guide. The biggest band in the world was never going to be left at bay, but once Plastic Ono Band was released, fans got a look at the authentic version of Lennon. Underneath that rough exterior, he was scared, lonely, and even a bit resentful of the people that he had worked with over the years who put him up on a pedestal.
While nothing mattered to him more than his life with Yoko during his solo career, that didn’t stop him from writing fantastic tunes. Some of the noise albums that he made with his other half may have been on the wrong side of listenable for a lot of people, but the minute that everyone got to hear what he had in store on Imagine, they started to realise that he had that fire in him from those days with the Fabs.
Some of the tunes might have been more vicious like ‘How Do You Sleep,’ but there were also tracks like ‘Jealous Guy’ that showed his softer side and ‘Gimme Some Truth’ that brought some commentary that hadn’t been seen since ‘Revolution.’ Although ‘Oh Yoko!’ had the words ‘hit’ prestamped on it, Lennon said that there was no way that he ever going to put it on the hit parade.
“Everybody wanted it to be a single – I mean, the record company, the public – everybody. But I just stopped it.
john lennon
For him, this was a personal matter, and he wasn’t about to go down the same rabbit hole by dragging Yoko into the proceedings, saying, “It’s a very popular track, but I was sort of shy and embarrassed and it didn’t sort of represent my image of myself as the tough, hard-biting rock ‘n’ roller with the acid tongue. Everybody wanted it to be a single – I mean, the record company, the public – everybody. But I just stopped it from being a single ’cause of that.”
Anyone in their right mind would have given their left arm to release that as a single, but it also has to do with where Lennon’s head may have been at the time. Think about it for a second. Ono was already being blamed as the reason why the band had to break up, and while that argument is completely off the mark, having a song that called attention to her may have only confirmed what skeptics were already trying to say.
Even though it does have the hallmarks of some of the great productions Phil Spector produced in the past, it was probably for the best to keep it as Lennon fans’ little secret. Any casual fan might flock to ‘Imagine’ or ‘Instant Karma,’ but they are missing out on one of the biggest earworms of Lennon’s career.
