Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Imagine, John Lennon Musical Analysis


History of John Lennon
  John Lennon was born on October 9, 1940 in Liverpool, England while the World War II was going on. His father, Arthur Lennon, was a merchant seaman who had to travel a lot thus; there were very little interactions between the father and son.
   Since John’s parents had divorced due to an affair, John had been living in his aunt, Mimi. Although his mother, Julia, remarried after sometime, she still visits John frequently, teaching John how to play the piano and guitar at the same time, buying him his first guitar. Tragically, John was shattered when he heard the news regarding to the death of his mother after being struck down by a car driven by a drunken police officer on July, 1958.
  In his early school years, John was a pain to the headmaster as he was a prankster and had always enjoyed getting into trouble or creating them. He was sent to an art school for college by the headmaster thinking that he had artistic talents despite of his inability to perform well in his academics.
  He attended the Liverpool College of Art and was inspired by Elvis Presley’s rock music to form his first own band called the “Quarry Men”.  He met Paul McCartney at a church event and invited him to join his band, with the addition of George Harrison, Stu Sutcliffe, and Pete Best later on.
  By time, the group underwent several name changes and losses of original band members Stu Sutcliffe and Pete Best where Stu died of a brain tumor and Pete Best, the drummer in the band, being replaced by Ringo Star, also known as Richard Starkey.  As a final decision, they ended up with the band name called “The Beatles” with its four members and went around performing in bars and clubs.
  During his regularly based performance in Cavern Club, the band was discovered by Brian Epstein in 1961, which cleaned up the group by replacing their black leather jackets with suits and also securing a contract with the EMI with him as a manager and George Martin as the producer. The group released their first single, “Love Me Do” in October 1962 which tops the British Hot Chart at the 17th.
 They gradually became more and more popular album by album, eventually breaking out big in America and having their first world tour after their movie, “A Hard Day’s Night” in 1964. However, they had to stop touring in 1966 due to their lives being in danger after their declaration of themselves for being even popular than Jesus, triggering minor uproars and the bon firing of Beatles albums in whole.  This was when John is introduced to drugs by Bob Dylan.
  In 1967, Epstein passed away due to the overdose of sleeping pills, which was a very big impact to the group, who succumbed under the leadership of McCartney and filmed another tour- “Magical Mystery Tour”, which failed too.
 John got re-married with Yoko Ono, an artist whom he met in an exhibition after divorcing with his former wife Cynthia Powell in 1968, ending their 6 years of marriage. Together they recorded a single under the name of The Plastic Ono Band, “Give Peace a Chance”, which was widely welcomed by pacifists.
  The couple’s partnership had further affected the group which had disagreements and conflicts regarding to business deals and contracts within the Beatles Company. In the end, the group broke up officially in 1971 where John and his wife moved to New York to recover from the event.
  He released his solo album similar to primal scream therapy followed “Imagine”, which shook the world, it was his most successful track among all of John’s efforts, gaining the title of the third song of the all-time bests from the Rolling-Stones magazine.
  When his son Sean, being born on the same day as John’s 35th birthday, he decided to leave his singing carrier in order to take care of Sean. Five years later, he re-entered the musical industry with the album “Starting Over”. Sadly, he was assassinated by an unhinged fan a few weeks after its release in his apartment complex.  On 8 December 1980, at the age of 40, the living legend left us of his unfortunate death in Roosevelt Hospital.


Imagine- Song Analysis
   “Imagine” is composed by English musician John Lennon which was released on the May of 1971. It was his most successful track among all of his efforts. It had peaked in the top UK song charts for 5 years, shooting up to number one after his assassination during 1980 and made its mark in history, with the song well-known to generations after generations, an immortal piece.  
  The song, in overall, is relatively simple. However, with the song being simple, it gives the listener a feel of the uplifting of the inner strength, where the simplicity of the song plays a very big role to fulfill this as it makes the song very catchy and easy to be deciphered by the mind, allowing us to understand how the singer feels through the melody of the song.
  Melodic wise, the song has a narrow range in majority throughout the music, occasionally getting wider in range during the progression from the verse to the bridge. The rising of pitches sporadically throughout the piece catches the listeners’ attention, allowing them to drift off in their own thoughts towards the lyrics again while pulling them back preventing them getting too far away.
  Due to its simplicity, harmony is present only in the background music through chords of C, F, G and D, where the verse harmony is stable with only the change of chord at every fourth beat and present in a simple structure of:
Intro and Verse:
C///F///C///F,
C///F///C///F,
Am///Dm///G///G7
And Chorus:
F///G///C///E7///,
 F///G///C///E7///,
F///G///C///E7///,
F///G///C///C///
  The music rhythm has a slow beat however accompanied by the introduction of an uprising drum beat to create a balance of tempo in the song. Not only that, but the singer sings the song with an unsteady speed in the lyrics whilst maintaining within the beat of the song. He gives the listener time to absorb the meaning of the lyrics and to process it, to give you enough time to ask yourself questions while he answers you with his lyrics after that.
 As mentioned before, the song has a simple structure where instead of complex dynamics found in most of the songs which displays an obvious change from piano to forte and to piano again every bar, Imagine is a piece where the singer maintains a fixed loudness in majority part of the song, only increasing his volume slightly at the chorus, highlighting the message and purpose of the musical piece.
  With the song related to the singer grieving about imperfection of the world, while picturing his perfect world, the song displays sadness in it thus having a minor tonality. But then again, as observed, the song contains major chords too as it hints the happiness the singer obtained while seeing his perfect world. Therefore, a mixture of minor tonality and major tonality is used.
  A monophony texture is used where there is only one melodic line, in terms of no harmony accompaniment while the singer is singing. It gives the listener a feeling that the singer is talking directly to them through the song. Being touched up by the presence of echo in Imagine, it allows the listener to hallucinate, imaging the perfect world stated in the lyrics.
  The song follows a modified strophic in terms of forms. The melody of the verses and chorus are repeated throughout the song however accompanied by only slight melody changes to catch the listener’s attention. The simple repetitive structure of the song conveys the message in a clear way as the message is repeated several times during the song.
  There are many things that can happen in our minds that cannot happen in the real world. Hence, stating the meaning of the song name “Imagine”. The song’s focuses on the theme of peacefulness of the world, talking about the problems about the world “today” then projecting an ideal world in the listener’s mind. It was further emphasized by the line “I hope someday you’ll join us- And the world will live as one”, where its purpose is to create awareness of the world issues, asking for a better change.
  The lyrics consist of 5 powerful stanzas, with every verse beginning with the word “imagine”, stating a perfect scene without the problem of the issue, while telling the listener the solution to it through their own guilt.
The starting lines of the verse are:
1.       Imagine there’s no Heaven - It’s easy if you try,
2.       Imagine there’s no countries- It isn’t hard to do,
3.       Imagine there’s no possessions – I wonder if you can
It questions the presence of Heaven, later stating that it is easy to picture it in mind because it is less related to reality. Next, he says that it is a little hard to imagine a world with no country, as it focuses on the responsibility of the people in account to the whole country. Alas, he asks the listener to imagine a world with no possession, which he highly doubts we can as it is in the human nature for us to have our own selfish needs.
 
  Moving on, the three verses are closed with a bridge summing up everything mentioned in the previous stanzas, asserting the world moving in a whole, thus with their actions generating peace. The bridge of the song is:
Imagine all the people…
Living for today
Sharing all the world
Living life in peace
  The climax of the song, the chorus, is the most important part in the song which states his point to those who are in objection to his song. He wrote the lyrics with no demands and instructions at all, just merely stating that he’s not alone, there are others who have the same mind-sets too, and he hopes someday the one who disagrees will join too.
  The song was a great impact to the world. “Imagine” was released right in the middle of the Vietnam War, which acted as a source of motivation for the citizens of US to protest against the deaths of people caused by the war. The protestation was so great as the song was so widely used, it can be compared with the US national anthem, bringing fear to the anxious government who deported John. However, John was not discouraged. He continued creating songs about peace and was re-granted citizenship in the US after the war is over.
  His death was news for millions. Phones were ringing all over the world, televisions interrupted programs to declare his tragic deaths, and the world was a standstill on that day, with all the people mourning and grieving for John.



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