So Cee Lo sang a few songs at Times Square on New Year’s Eve, and he decided he’d do a cover of John Lennon’s absolutely perfect and timeless humanist anthem “Imagine”. That’s all well and good. Except…
The point of “Imagine” is a world where people live for the day and work together because they’re not worried about either a supernatural reward or punishment for what they do on Earth. Your little revision not only undermines the entire meaning of the song, it just plain doesn’t make any SENSE when you leave the first verse “Imagine there’s no heaven…” intact. I’m willing to accept that you may be a religious person, and you might have a problem with singing about a world where there’s no religion. You know what? If that’s a problem you have. then DON’T TRY AND DO A COVER OF “IMAGINE”.
Look, I like you as a singer. “The Lady Killer” is one of my favorite albums to come out in recent years. I liked you when you were with Gnarls Barkley. I liked the track you did with Carlos Santana. I even found some of your old hip-hop stuff on the internet and it’s not bad. But this is the kind of shit that would make me want to delete your tracks off my computer, throw your albums in the garbage, and refuse to listen to any of your future work on principle. Performing a cover of a song is supposed to show that you respect and admire the artist you’re covering, but in this case all you’ve done is piss all over John Lennon’s grave. If he knew what you’d done, he would not be pleased.
Oh, I heard you messin’ all round with the song I love, and i’m like, fuck you,
I guess the words that John Lennon wrote just weren’t good enough, and i’m like, fuck you, and uh, no religion too…
I’ve heard, although I have no proof, that it’s common for christian singers to sing “and one religion, too.” So, at least he’s not discriminatory.
(I haven’t heard any of his work with the exception of the Fuck You song, and as funny as that was, I’m totally willing to believe he is, philosophically, a pretty empty guy.)
I don’t even like that line in the song. It’s too anti-religion even for me. But it would have ruined the song for me to have altered it (well even more than it already was ruined by being a mediocre song.)
…and Johnny Cash if you’re going to sing a NIN song, sing it right, it’s “I wear this crown of shit. Upon my liar’s chair. Full of broken thoughts. I cannot repair.”
Does it mean that Judaism, which explicitly rejects Christ’s divinity, is true, and Christianity, which is based on it, is also true?
Or is this just a big “Fuck You” to Lennon?
Imagine (it’s easy if you try) an atheist singing a hymn, only instead of “Bless you, Jesus, for blessing us” it was “Fuck you, Jesus, for fucking us”–how twisted would Christians’ undies get at the arrogant blasphemy? (How much grief can I expect for even suggesting that Christians are hypocritical on this issue?)
I don’t want to get too worked up over this because at the time, I didn’t notice the change. (The performance was that captivating.) But it was a stupid change, and his explanation of the change is equally stupid.
OTOH, Cee-lo Green did not preform it better (you can’t really improve perfection); plus he changed the lyrics to be the exact antithesis to the original. WTF. John Lennon would have hated that change.
I don’t really give a shit - I think the change is stupid and incoherent, but whatever. He sang a song titled ‘fuck you’, so I’m not inclined to think that he even understands how the song originally meant the line in the first place.
You weren’t referring to me, but I figured since I didn’t know a whole lot about him, it’s applicable. My opinion of his philosophical deepness is now linked to this change in the song. The evidence I have is his mangling the ‘imagine’ song by changing a phrase and rendering the meaning incoherent.
All religions cannot be true since quite a few of them are mutually exclusive.
Is he a talented artist? Yeah, I find his stuff catchy. I don’t recall finding any of his material particularly deep. Please correct my ignorance if he has produced anything of philosophical depth.
Considering that Lennon knew he’d just lie in the ground and rot after he died I don’t think he’d care much about people pissing on his grave. Just saying.
Eh… when you have the Bieb going all Kidz Bop on Let It Be, Cee Lo changing the words to Imagine is not the biggest tragedy in Times Square on NYE and loses some of it’s RO.
“Crown of thorns” sounds better in the line, flowing better with the vowel sounds around it, and is symbolically meaningful. “Crown of shit” just doesn’t sound as good or sing as well.
Furthermore, although it doesn’t sound good, “Crown of shit” still might suit a young singer (e.g. Trent Reznor) whose job is to, well, sound like a young guy being edgy singing to young people who want him to be edgy. The Cash version is sung by an old man, in the voice of an old man, and “Crown of thorns” just works better for that voice, especially as a contrast to “liar’s chair.” The genius of the Cash version is that it’s the same song, but he’s telling a different story, and “crown of thorns” works better for that story.
As Trent Reznor himself has signed off on the Cash version with a smile on his face, I’d say the Man in Black nailed it.
Conversely, the Cee Lo Green change doesnt make sense at all.
I am like, sooooooooo way outraged that someone sang a song and the words weren’t right. I suggest an amendment to the Patriot Act to deal with this issue.