please don't assume I'm judging the song because of the person who wrote it. I'm not huge on the sentiment that he gives in the song; I think it's very naive and sappy, regardless of who wrote it. musically, I don't think there's very much going on, certainly not enough for it to be canonized like it is now, and the lyrics don't do enough to redeem it. I could go into how uninteresting the song is on a musical level but I'm not sure that many people here would be very intrigued by that.
I wasn't assuming anything, although you're getting oddly defensive. You gave literally no reason to why you thought Imagine was "gross", except for those three words. Combined with the rest of your post, it seems like you didn't like it because you felt it was hypocritical, which isn't really a valid criticism on its own.
On the naive thing, the song is called
Imagine. So, again, claiming that those ideals could never be achieved in real life is kind of an invalid criticism because the song isn't about "we should do this", it's about idealism.
I agree on the song itself though, I think the song is pretty average. You really don't need to lecture me on that. In fact, most of the Beatles' music was incredibly average. It is catchy, though. If you want to talk about interesting compositions, go look at Hendrix. Unlike the Beatles he didn't have to completely change key all the time in order to be a decent musician. Then again, the value in a song isn't necessarily how complex it was or how musically innovative it is, but how much it influences others. Jesus, just look at how Gangnam Style took the world by storm 2 years ago, with a very simple structure and nothing particularly interesting, but the song was catchy, had hilarious lines ("EEEEY SEXY LAAAADY") and had a visually appealing music video to boot. It doesn't even have Imagine's excuse of being "inspirational" because most people who enjoyed it don't even understand what it's about!
as to how I could possibly hate a guy that's been dead for so long I don't think that's a very valid retort: just because someone did bad things in life does that mean we're supposed to automatically forget them when they die simply because they're dead and we shouldn't think ill of the dead or whatever? and when did I ever say that it's a bad thing for someone to like him? in fact, I think it's worse to not like the Beatles because they made amazing music and their influence was massive. I'm just saying that people should dissect the guy's actions a bit more before they go preaching that he was an incredible guy and that he always stood behind what he believed, which he
simply wasn't. (for the record I don't believe everything said in that second article but some of the things it says are hard to go against.)
My point was apparently missed completely.
It's not that "someone is absolved of all of their sins when they die". That's not true. There's plenty of examples of people where this is totally untrue.
But what does it really matter if someone didn't stand by their principles if someone is inspired by these so called principles to do something better? Whatever, if you think Lennon was a hypocrite, that doesn't matter. If someone takes what Lennon said, makes something good out of it, and isn't a hypocrite, then don't you think that perhaps Lennon wasn't really that terrible of a person at all? Sure, people can talk the talk but **** the walk, but if other people walk the walk then perhaps the talk wasn't really that bad after all. I mean for ****'s sake it's not like we're talking about someone being "inspired" by Hitler or something, and Lennon's messages are those that can be very inspirational and positive, even to those who may not necessarily agree with them, and even if he didn't believe in them himself.
It's like condemning the words of a preacher who tells people to love your neighbour because he hates his neighbours because they're [whatever]. Does that mean that the words are somehow invalid? Of course the preacher is an *******, whatever. But does that make the influence of that preacher any worse because he didn't actually follow his rules? What about people who did follow those rules set up by that preacher and made other people's lives better by not judging them and not being jealous?
Anyways, unless someone did something really awful like Ted Bundy or some other murderer or something I really don't give a **** if they're a hypocrite. We can whine about how they didn't follow their own lessons but that's their fault. Perhaps we should look at their failings and try to improve ourselves from there, and that's what a lot of people inspired by people who like Lennon do anyways.
Even if Lennon was a hypocrite it doesn't make people who were inspired by him to be hypocrites. We're essentially just wasting our time whining about how horrible someone was because they did the totally unforgivable sin of being a hypocrite, something that I see a lot on this forum anyways, especially when they're dead, while ignoring the cultural value that someone actually had on the world, really.
Ultimately everyone in the world is a hypocrite, some more than others, and it's so easy to prey on people's hypocrisy without actually thinking about the consequences of what their actions really are, regardless of whether or not they're positive.
As such, his value lies in how he inspired other people, I believe. I don't agree with a lot of the things he was into, but he improved a lot of lives, even despite his own vices, and has transcended many groups of people, so there is that.
