What would it matter if it was a national anthem? A song is a song, and a lyric change either makes sense or it doesn’t.
Anyone remember when the Mormon monchichi David Archuleta sang it on American Idol and omitted the “Imagine there’s no heaven/it’s easy if you try” and other early lines that proposed imagining no religion? IIRC he started with “Imagine all the people…”.
The video: he begins with “Imagine no possessions”.
I just wanted to say thanks for this link. The only time I had heard this song previously was in Kick-Ass. I had no idea why it was in the movie, but it makes sense now that it would have been something that teens would know and that most of the general public would know as well.
Heh, he skipped more then half the song. Ah well, omission feels better than an inversion (that’s ultimately what got me). Inverting the meaning of Lennon’s lyrics feels like a betrayal of one of his core beliefs.
It’s like if someone covered “The heathen” (or really any Bob Marley song) and changed “Jah” to “Jesus.” I’d call shenanigans.
Does he have an arm deformity?
That’d be a much smaller change. It’d make the song not specifically Rastafarian, but not *anti-*Rasta. Rastafarians certainly believe in Jesus. On the other hand changing “No religion, too” to “One religion, too” does actually invert what Lennon was saying - and worse, it’s really freaking creepy.
Are you sure about that? I don’t think the Wailers had some really strong anti-Jesus stuff (they did have tons of anti-“Babylon/Baldhead” stuff FWIW), but Peter Tosh did have this verse in Get up, Stand up:
Plus, the song’s called “The Heathen” if “Jah” is changed to “Jesus” who does the title now address?
This is the last time I causally infer religious teachings from reggae songs when I have wikipedia.
Nah, just call it terrorism and use the NDAA Obama signed. 
This is almost certainly a BS urban legend. For starters, you’d have to change several lines, not just one. It would sound retarded, even to “christian singers.” Having listened to a lot of bad Christian music in the 80s, and having married someone who used to be in that industry, I can say pretty confidently it was never “common.”
If you’ve already looked at Wikipedia this is kind of pointless, but since I already typed it:
Yes. Rastafarianism began with the belief that Emperor Haile Selassie was the second coming of Jesus. “Jah” is their nickname for Jehovah, which is to say the Judeochristian god.
They don’t have any anti-Jesus stuff. The criticism there isn’t of Jesus, it’s of killing in the name of Jesus. That song goes on to quote the old proverb “You can fool some people some time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” Rastafarians have their own Bible and I would say they believe Eurocentric Christianity is a distortion of the truth. They do believe in Jesus, and when they talk about Babylon, they’re using the term pretty much the same way early Christians used it. I suppose apocalypse enthusiasts still use it that way.
Hey breaking news: you don’t need to believe in mythology in order to have a moral code.
Also “Imagine” is insipid and boring and I really don’t get its continued veneration. I mean, I know we don’t have all that many pop songs that forward the “good without god” message but seriously you guys, it’s crap.
For the love of fuck - reality check!
The guy changed up a freakin’ song. Is this really a big deal?
I just can’t wrap my head around why this is such an outrage or why anybody would give 2 shits. Or even one shit.
Some people are acting like The Word of Lennon is sacrosanct. It ain’t.
Others are acting like changing The Word of Lennon or even The Meaning of the Song of Lennon is blasphemy. It ain’t.
Two words: Artistic license.
Learn it. Know it. Live it.
I am aware of this. That is why I am a pessimist since I personally think fear of damnation is what keeps a lot of people from completely lawlessness. (FWIW-as a Jewish person, this doesn’t apply to me; I actually have a moral code-I just have no faith in the rest of humankind).
This is the more important point that I was trying to make.
I see no reason why someone can not cover a song and change it to fit their style. Makes covers interesting. You can like or not. I can’t think of any song I would get that upset about.
My goodness! It’s almost as a bad as a millionaire writing songs about how all the rest of us should put aside our materialistic aspirations.
Exceedingly.. ugh… and someone needs to get Carlos Santana a steady job. Rob Thomas, Everlast, Michelle Branch and now the Bieb? Good Lord what’s next? Johnny Lydon doing a duet with Miranda Cosgrove?
Yep. Because intelligent people never ever use profanity. No real artist would ever put the obscene or the taboo in the spotlight.
Performed by Cee Lo in fur coat and gold chains - it’s almost like he was mocking the premise of the song…
The guy’s been around long enough to know exactly what would happen - lots of free publicity, the overly-religious idiots lapping up the change, the hipsters smirking at the irony, and a few people who don’t listen to him because he’s more recent than Lennon getting impotently outraged because they misunderstand both the original (to the extent that there’s any actual meaning there) and his cover.
Here’s some more Cee Lo. Not sure how him singing over a dubstep track can remind me of the Clash, but it does.
The fact that the version in question has changed lyrics definitely means he didn’t understand the line. He also didn’t understand the lyrics to Imagine. 