You are here: Home » Entertainment » Cee Lo Green Learns You Don’t Change Lyrics To “Imagine” The Hard Way

Cee Lo Green Learns You Don’t Change Lyrics To “Imagine” The Hard Way

Posted by: Bridgette P. LaVictoire on January 1, 2012.

There are some songs which are, quite honestly, pretty close to sacred. They express something beyond that which is easily identified. They are filled with inspiration, hope, and love in such a way that just changing one lyric is, honestly, sacrilegious. Very few songs are like that, but if there is one song like that, it would be “Imagine” by John Lennon.

In a sense, the song wraps up the feelings of an era more than anything else, and changing the lyrics just seems wrong. It does not matter if the one changing the lyrics is Joan Baez, Lady Gaga or whoever Cee Lo Green is.

Last night, Cee Lo Green sang “Imagine” at Times Square just before the ball dropped. In the below video, that is at about 3:53 into it. Standing there, wearing a fur coat and a gold watch, Green sang the line “imagine no possessions” without a sign of irony. Yet, it was when he changed the line “and no religion too” to “and all religions true”, he set off a firestorm.

Joan Baez also had problems with that particular line in the song. She changed it to something along the lines of ‘and no religion but your own’.

Green decided to respond with “Yo I meant no disrespect by changing the lyric guys! I was trying to say a world were u could believe what u wanted that’s all” Which seems to have missed the point.

6 Responses to Cee Lo Green Learns You Don’t Change Lyrics To “Imagine” The Hard Way

john Reply

January 3, 2012 at 7:52 am

john lennon himself stated that when you lift lyrics from another song writer’s work it is not a rip-off, it is rather a love in. google it! lennon ripped off ideas for the song from the communist manifesto. he also ripped off chuck berry lyrics for come together. all those all you need is love types are really spewing out the hateful bile! the atheists have just proven they worship a man and his works/words.
tbone Reply

January 3, 2012 at 3:50 am

Baez changes it to “a family of man” rather than a “brotherhood of man” and “I wonder if I can” when Imagining “no possessions”, as opposed to “I wonder if you can.”
Pingback: Recommended: Fans angry that Cee Lo changed ‘Imagine’ lyrics – msnbc.com | U.S.A News
Logan Hallo Reply

January 2, 2012 at 7:35 am

Hey you fool leave that song the way it is you look like a fat fool who dressed up in your fur and destroyed a masterpiece. Then you change the lyrics to suite your views your disgusting and your 15 mins of fame is up go away you fat bastard.
Jenn Reply

January 2, 2012 at 5:39 am

In the words of Cee-Lo “F- you” guys who care about this edit. John Lennon covered and edited songs all of the time. It is a part of music that he valued highly. I would rather hear Cee-Lo singing a song he could believe in with an edit than for him to sing a song that he honestly didn’t believe in as written. It is Cee-Lo’s performance of the song, he gets to say what he wants, it is his own expression of the song. It wasn’t malicious!
- Andre
  
  January 2, 2012 at 7:13 am
  
  Jeen by changing the meaning of the song to the complete oposite he just said a “fck you” to John Lennon song.
  
  i know he is a nobody, but even that nobody just got himself alot of problems….

Leave a Reply Cancel reply