Saturday 4 June 2022

Some Time In New York City - JOHN LENNON**

Woman Is The Nigger Of The World/Sisters O Sisters/Attica State/Born In A Prison/New York City/Sunday Bloody Sunday/The Luck Of The Irish/John Sinclair/Angela/We're All Water/Cold Turkey/Don't Worry Kyoko/ Well... (Baby Please Don't Go)/Jamrag/Scumbag/Au

A partly live double album from John Lennon which must have severely disappointed his fans. Highly political in content his choice of backing ‘vocalist’ did nothing to improve matters. (US:48 UK:11)

“This material ranges from decent but not worthy of John Lennon's name to pretty good. Lyrically he feels nihilistic, angry and hurt.” “The studio first part is decent in places but just flat out boring in others. I expect this from Yoko's output, but Lennon's work is pretty disappointing overall, especially coming not long after the wonderful Imagine album.”

“Lennon maintained his commitment to social politics with some great consciousness raising, political protest songs. They aren't slick, overdubbed or pretty. But they are good rock ‘n' roll. John and Yoko had the honesty to stand up for the underdog, and for justice, and they didn't care who they alienated.”

“The political content is what it is, mostly embarrassing, full of sound bites and fantasy. I think Lennon had good intentions but he just did not express quite complex situations very well at all.”

“It was unfortunate, but John Lennon was one of the very few that appreciated the caterwauling of Yoko Ono. Even worse, he maintained her presence in his work in spite of the world’s distain for it. This being the case, any opportunity Lennon may have had at using his celebrity to convey the political views that are the focal point of this album were greatly diminished as even his biggest fans could not endure an album marred by Ono’s intolerable squalling.”

Sometime In New York City was recorded during John Lennon and Yoko Ono's most politically active period. The album has a mixture of John songs, Yoko songs, and some that they wrote together, covering a range of different political topics such as feminism, prisoners and Northern Ireland. It's definitely the weakest album of John Lennon's solo career and was his first critical and commercial failure.”

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