On September 9, 1971, the ballad “Imagine” was released and touched the world with its hopeful message about the need for global understanding. Up until recently, John Lennon got sole writing credit for the song. However, in June 2017, the National Music Publishers Association announced that Lennon’s legendary love, Yoko Ono, will finally receive a co-writing credit as part of the organization’s Centennial Song Award.
Yoko Ono grew up in Tokyo and worked in the downtown New York City art scene in the 1960’s. Ono met Lennon in 1966 when she exhibited her art at a London gallery. After a three-year whirlwind romance, Lennon and Ono married in March of 1969. Often mischaracterized as a scheming and overly ambitious woman, Ono was often the victim of racist slurs and attacks. Additionally, many Beatles fans blamed her for The Beatles subsequent 1970 break-up. In an interview, Ono denied those allegations, saying, “I don’t think you could have broken up four very strong people like them… even if you tried. So there must have been something that happened within them – not an outside force at all.”
Lennon and Ono’s relationship transcended romance from the start. They collaborated on many recordings, including “Give Peace A Chance,” and famously held Bed-ins for Peace to protest the Vietnam War. They held their first bed-in during their 1969 honeymoon at an Amsterdam hotel. Despite his progressive ideology about human rights, Lennon shared in a 1980 BBC interview that his machismo and ego got in the way of giving Ono the co-writer credit for “Imagine.” He spoke about the sexist double-standard behind him leaving her out when he said, “If it had been a male, you know – Harry Nilsson’s ‘Old Dirt Road’– it’s ‘Lennon-Nilsson’. But when we did [‘Imagine’] I just put ‘Lennon’ because, you know, she’s just the wife and you don’t put her name on, right?”
Since Lennon’s tragic 1980 death, Ono has continued to carry on the legacy of her late husband with various artistic projects and causes, including co-founding Artists Against Fracking unveiling the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, and becoming the oldest singer to have a number-one song on the dance charts with her 2011 hit, “Move On Fast.”