John Lennon

I'm not the world's greatest Beatles fan but there were pretty damn good - before they degenerated into St Pepper self-indulgence, that is. Unquestionably the whole was greater than the sum of the parts because these taken individually were fairly dreadful - and none more so than John Lennon, who would have been seventy today, had he not got himself shot.

I wish he had lived because without his untimely passing, his woeful solo output would have disappeared into the obscurity it so richly deserves. All of it was utterly dismal but the song that deserves special mention is Imagine.



The melody is moronic, the facile lyrics make you weep for all the wrong reasons - plus it is badly-performed. Also, this great steaming turd of a song was at No. 1 for what seemed like an eternity when he died. All this prompts me to ask the question, hoping against hope that I am not alone: was there ever a more excruciating song in the English language than this appalling dirge?