Cee Lo Green changes John Lennon's "Imagine"

“Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color” - Don Hirschberg

Then maybe he should go write his own fucking song about it.

 

I, for one, like Cee Lo Green.
He was Gnarls Barkley, everyone liked that for a few seconds.
And he was a part of Goodie Mob, whom I like very much.
He's never been ambiguous about his own religious beliefs.

I like the sentiments of the song imagine, but, again, I don't think Cee Lo's substitution of three words is that significantly different from the original song. It's not as if he stood there and said, 'and jesus died for you.' Give the guy a break.

I haven't been following the news or anything, but judging from some of the reactions here, I can see that it's being turned into a fairly big deal...as big deals go in America these days.

I always felt like the 'no religion, too' bit was tacked onto that line of the song, anyway.

 

News to me, That would make two songs associated with him that I have heard. That song Crazy was not too bad but was nothing I have had any interest in downloading or recording from youtube.
My general knowledge of current "pop music" tends to not stray far what gets radio play and is iffy even then. Personally I prefer more of the "pop music" from the era when that term was applied to Benny Goodman.

 

I still can't get over Cee Lo's cover of Kung Fu Fighting. OMG! That song was supposed to be all about co-opting a laughably racist interpretation of chinese culture for the purposes of disco and Cee Lo decided he wanted to sing a song about dedication and hard work and overcoming obstacles and kung fu fighting.

 

Yes, a flash in the pan with a 20 year career as a musician.

 

If there ever were a meaningless musical award...

 

People in this thread don't know what Cee-Lo is doing, what he has created, the name of the groups he is associated with . . . Lennon on the other hand, though dead for many years, has demonstrated a world-wide reach and a potent longevity both musically and with what he tried to accomplish. I guess I'm saying that there are ways to look at many things, including the relative influence and interest level generated by different people. As far as I'm concerned Lennon is a world-class icon. The other guy is somebody who decided to use him in an inappropriate context to push a personal agenda.

 

My first and most sincere reaction is to not give a fuck, and to be mildly surprised that anyone had a fuck to give about it. Musicians change lyrics. Some intentionally, some unintentionally. Happens all the time. John Lennon was a great, but that doesn't give him some kind of magical pass: "Imagine" isn't even that great a song, and suddenly it's a shocking abuse of the Lennon canon to throw in a bit of a change-up? And, BTW, how ironic is it that a lyric glorifying atheism is being treated like gospel?

My second and mostly desultory reaction is to be pleased with the change. I get that John Lennon, like many atheists, apparently had a bad experience with his religious upbringing and teaching, looked around and noticed that some of the most audible voices in religion to outsiders are the voices of radical fundamentalist zealots, and decided on the basis of those two things that religion, en masse, sucks. But since not only am I personally religious, and yet not a radical fundamentalist zealot, but most religious people are also not radical fundamentalist zealots, attitudes like that lyric in "Imagine" kind of rub me the wrong way. Cee Lo apparently decided that a perfected world ought to reflect tolerance, and not intolerance. Good on him, I say.

 

Ok. Well I have no idea who Cee-Lo is and have not heard his/her rendition of this song. I am in many ways separated from the US yet in other ways connected. With all that stated there are a few songs that have personal meaning to me, JL's Imagine being one. When I was a freshmen in HS I came home one day to find my father in the house. An odd event since he usually left for work before I woke up and came home after long after I was asleep. He didn't mine coal or work long hours at the local mill... he was an accountant for the state of Oregon. But he put in massive hours and as a young man I rarely saw him. On this one day I came home and he was listening to the Beatles "Hey Jude." He told me this was a really good song and that he liked it... so all rock wasn't bad. "Umm, ok (are you stoned... or? well... or what have you done with my dad and who are you?) He then put on "Imagine" and basically said the same thing... "I like some rock... see it's not all bad" "Uhhh, yeah I like rock" ( but I'm currently listening to songs for this decade.... D'uh.) Years later, pretty much too late, I realized this was his attempt to reach out to me and make a connection and I saw it solely as my dad being weird. Who knew teenagers were clueless?

As years passed I found these two songs a couple by Bruce Springsteen were songs that clicked for both my father and I. I could put them on and we'd be on decent terms... not a usual experience for the two of us. Basically a Beatles song, a John Lennon song and two Springsteen songs could diffuse a shit load of tension. These songs weren't needed if the SF 49'ers were playing (even less if if they were winning.)

So long story short, if that's possible at this point, JL's "Imagine" has special meaning to me. Is it a great song? I don't know. My mind on that is clouded . To me it is and when people make changes I usually don't like them but that has more to do with me personally then the musically quality of the song.

 

I wasn't going to say any thing, but yeah, that ^

Imagine IS a most profound song. John Lennon is a profound and iconic atist.

Cee Lo changed a couple words in his OWN rendition. He didn't record it and present it as some world shaking event. He sang a version of Lennon's song on a New Years Eve TV program. A TV program with Dick Clark, probably called New Years Rockin Eve.

I will make the wild assuption that most of you who have viseral objections to Cee Lo's version are the ones who experienced the song while you were young and HIGH, or at least young and impressionable.
When I was young and the same the music that meant the most to me was Stevie Wonder and Earth Wind And Fire. There are others but they don't come to mind as I write this, but there were songs, bands, musicians who during a party, disco, get together, whatever that in the first couple notes would stop all action in a crowd of hundreds, thousands if it were say a conccert and everybody for a time would be of one mind.
Side note: I hope that still happens for the younger generation today
If someone, anyone made/sang/covered the same music today and made a change, even the original artist themselves, I probably wouldn't like it. In fact I would probably be taken out of the moment for a time until I decided that this new version was shit and didn't want to hear anymore.
But, if I were upset by it, my solution was simple. Go home and listen to the original to get the shitty version out of my head.

Job done.

 

That some performers feel justified changing the lyrics to well known songs they had no part in creating and that some listeners don't give a shit that they do, doesn't make the practice right. Being a songwriter, I am probably too close to the subject to have any objectivity but when I spend hours agonizing over a single word in a lyric to make sure it conveys exactly what I want it to, I get sick imagining that someone outside of the process would decide he/she knows better and arbitrarily change what I've so carefully constructed. Of course, I'm talking about intentional changes.

An extreme example, but the same principle applies were someone to justify altering the Mona Lisa to give her a more obvious smile or more cleavage or blonde hair. A case in point, Craig Hotchkiss' rewritten PC version of Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" substituting "slave" for "nigger" everywhere the offensive word appears. Must we water everything down to cater to the sensibilities of the fearful, intolerant or easily offended?

Personally, it's got less to do with what Cee Lo chose to change the phrase to than it does the simple and disturbing fact that he thought he knew better than the artist who wrote it. It shows no respect for intellectual property and the creative process.

In all honesty, I question whether it was even his choice to change it. This is America and anything smacking of atheism is increasingly intolerable and unacceptable.

"And no religion too" is a crap phrase and Lennon could have come up with something better. But he didn't. That was his choice. Justifying the change to it because you don't like the song or the artist or think the line was crap anyway, is pretty lame. For those of you condoning the practice of changing lyrics the singer has had no part in writing, I suggest you try writing and recording a song yourself. Or create a sculpture out of white granite, sell it to the bank down the street, and wonder why you're so upset when you see it out in front of their building spray painted in purple and red stripes to match their logo.

If he/they didn't think "Imagine" would go over in it's entirety, he/they probably should have picked a different song.

 

I am a devout John Lennon fan, and Imagine is his finest effort. He is one of the greatest musical artists of the 20th century. His influence on music and pop culture was profound. The day after he was shot, there was a tribute to him, quickly put together, by one of the networks. They ended with the video of him and Oko walking out of the house and into the backyard studio where he sat at the white piano to play Imagine as she opened the curtains (the same piano as in the poster in the original Imagine album). I was very close to tears.

I didn't see Cee Lo's performance, and I will say that I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like it; I have yet to hear a cover of Imagine that I liked. But I don't care. To me, it's like burning the flag, or some other irreverent act done to shock or inflame. It just isn't worth worrying about. Imagine will remain an iconic piece long after Cee Lo is forgotten.

 

I don't see any indication that Cee Lo Green thinks he 'knows better' than John Lennon. As for co-opting art and changing it, it is done all of the time. In music, literature and the fine arts. This being one of the lesser and less obnoxious and offensive cases, if you ask me. Which makes the brouhaha puzzling, but then again not. It's viral.

 

Today I learned there was a musician named Cee Lo Green. Wow I'm disconnected from pop culture.

 

talk as much crap as you want, the dude makes some powerful tracks in my opinion.

 

i've been a pianist for a very long time and would be delighted if someone were to use my sound/remix it/remake remodel it. it's publicity. like this is. it's turned out to be a smart move for cee-lo, yes? gets his name out there. we do what we're expected to.

 

Joniemack, I get how you feel. I wish I could play, been trying for years. Jazz is my thing, and that's something that's open to translation. Yet when I am listening to a peice I enjoy being covered by someone else, and those few times I'm getting into it, then I hear some unexpected, out of place imbelishment, whoa. I kinda feel broadsided.
But it's only music.
When I listen to whoever or when I am singing to myself I imbelish all the time. We all do. We all do because we all hear something different when we listen to the same peice.

Maybe it was a religious thing with Cee Lo. Maybe it was too close to blasphemy singing "no" religion too.

jussayin