Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Cee-Lo changes lyrics to John Lennon's "Imagine;" misses point
(link via DaisyDeadhead )
On NBC's New Years Eve show, singer Cee-Lo covering John Lennon's classic "Imagine" changed its most noted line, ""Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too" to "Nothing to kill or die for, And all religion's true." Lennon fans were not happy.
And to be honest, I'm not either. Not because I think anyone's art is so untouchable, or any one artist (even Lennon) should be held to such idolatrous standards, but because nullifies the original meaning. Cee-Lo missed the point. Injecting religion into things that specifically call-out religion's hold on society, and the problems created in its name, makes me extremely uncomfortable. Yeah, he twitter-apologized (which has since been removed), and he probably thought his intentions were good, but ugh. No.
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Yeah, no.
ReplyDeleteConsidering that religion is probably the biggest thing that people 'kill or die for'.. just no.
What on earth did he mean? Assume, for the sake of argument, that he meant something like, "all religion partakes of some universal, or at least personal, truth, and therefore, religious bigotry is unacceptable (a stretch, I know)." Then, his actual "edit" was just too vague and mushheaded to get it across. I much prefer celebrity speech like Natalie Maines saying she was ashamed George Bush came from Texas. A concise and clear message. People could disagree, but they were unlikely to misinterpret.
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