Cee Lo Green decided it was OK to change the lyrics of John Lennon’s iconic song, “Imagine,” when he sang the 40-year old song to millions of viewers on NBC on New Year’s Eve, in New York City’s Times Square. What an amazing slap in the face to the murdered singer-songwriter who was shot to death just blocks away from where Cee Lo’s artistic license for a moment took precedence over the man whose work has been placed in such high esteem that it’s been compared to national anthems.
There’s even a John Lennon memorial in Central Park, called Strawberry Fields, with the emblematic song title immortalized (image, right.)
Cee Lo Green, who is famous for songs like “Crazy” and “Fuck You,” (no, not this one,) as is his usual style, took to Twitter to defend his choice — changing the lyrics from Lennon’s
“Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too”
to
“Nothing to kill or die for, and all religion’s true”
Fortunately, America wasn’t having it, and Cee Lo, as is also his usual style, merely deleted his tweets.
“The change didn’t go unnoticed, and to preempt criticism, he soon tweeted, ‘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’,” The Huffington Post reported.
Cee Lo Green also meant no disrespect, supposedly, when he accused journalist Andrea Swensson of being gay, earlier this year, because she didn’t like a performance he delivered. He deleted his tweets then, too.
Now, many have changed the lyrics to many songs over time, but Cee Lo did it at the wrong place, at the wrong time, to the wrong song, totally changing the very essence of “Imagine,” which Lennon himself once characterized as “anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic.”
The Huffington Post has screenshots of tweets that captured what people were feeling when they heard the Cee Lo version of “Imagine.” One read, “fuck you, @CeeLoGreen. sing it right or don’t sing it at all.”
Indeed.
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