John Lennon was a musical genius, but he said plenty of ridiculous things, such as that he wrote the first feminist song. No, he didn’t. More than that, it’s highly dubious that the song in question even counts as a feminist song because of its offensive lyrics.
John Lennon wrote the most offensive feminist song ever
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The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features an interview from 1980. In it, John explained the title of his most controversial solo song: “Woman Is the N***** of the World.” “That’s something Yoko said in 1968 in an interview,” he said. “It was just such a powerful statement, a few years later I turned it into a song. So it’s her title and my song.
“Actually, I think ‘Woman Is the N*****of the World’ is the first women’s liberation song that came out,” he said. “It was before Helen Reddy’s ‘I Am Woman.’ I don’t know if my lyrics lived up to Yoko’s title.” The song’s overall message is supposed to be that women are poorly treated in all societies across the globe.
Plenty of great feminist songs came out before ‘Woman Is the N***** of the World’
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John’s statement is layered. It is true that “Women Is the N***** of the World” came out in April 1972, the month before Reddy put out “I Am Woman.” The claim that the former was the first women’s liberation song is ridiculous. The women’s liberation movement started in the 1960s, a decade that saw the release of such feminist classics as Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” and Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” both of which are far more popular today than “Woman Is the N***** of the World.”
But is “Woman Is the N***** of the World” actually a feminist song in the first place? Many commentators would say it isn’t. It was not the “Imagine” singer’s place to use the most offensive slur in the English language, even if he thought it was in the service of a larger point. While the song remains inflammatory, it still has its defenders. During a 2021 interview with Rolling Stone, the controversial rapper Azealia Banks cited “Woman Is the N***** of the World” as one of the greatest songs of all time. During the same interview, she said she hates The Beatles because she prefers their 1960s rivals, The Beach Boys
John Lennon thought women were smarter than men
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Elsewhere in All We Are Saying, John revealed what he thought of Yoko and women in general. “Unfortunately, she’s almost always right, although she doesn’t need to remind me of it over and over,” he said. “Jesus, she’s a lot smarter than I am — a lot more intelligent. Most women are innately more intelligent than men, I think.
“And Yoko’s specifically bright,” the “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night” singer said. “I mean, you can see that yourself, and to live with her is to live with a searchlight. It keeps me awake. But sometimes you don’t wanna be awake. I mean, it’s too much. You wanna be a fool. I do.”
John viewed women as highly intelligent even if he wasn’t very good at writing feminist anthems.
