On NYE Broadcast, Cee Lo Green Sings “Imagine” With Line “And All Religion’s True”

Worse, his singing sucked.

Forget him. Oh wait… Those aren’t the words to his song either.

He must’ve heard lots real quick, he tried a damage-control Tweet:

“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”

Guess starting the song with “Imagine there’s no Heaven” kinda negates that excuse.

Doofus

I think it’s at least a little better than another version I’ve heard before, in which the words were changed to, “…and ONE religion, too.”  But only a little better.  Either change shows that, clearly, the people changing the lyrics don’t get the message of the song.

Awesome!  This appears in my List of Things I Don’t Care About Because I Was Too Busy Living My Life, Volume 12.

Who the fuck is Cee-Lo Green?  I mean, I saw the thing, but, who the fuck is he? Everyone’s acting like he’s some big name???

Exactly. It is just one more attempt to foist religion on everyone. Green comes from a family of ordained ministers. All that brainwashing starts coming out later in the worst sort of ways and tonight Green performed in the worst sort of way. He should never be allowed to publicly perform another Lennon song and legal actions should be taken for that travesty
in Time Square.

lol @ the idea of all religions being true. Embarrassing rewrite.

Wow- taking someone else’s song and twisting the lyrics to mean literally the complete opposite of what they originally said. Classy.

if you didn’t want to say the line sing a different song

There are probably better things to be upset about. For example, the actual performance of the song. I’m growing more and more inclined to think that nobody but John Lennon can actually do this song justice, and thus covering it should probably be banned.

I knew something like this was going to happen the minute he started singing. No surprise there, but I’m still angry.

Congratulations Cee Lo you sir have just mangled a song by the great John Lennon. He must be rolling in his grave as I speak.

my response:

@CeeLoGreen I see you messing around with the lyrics I love and I’m like, fuck you! patheos.com/blogs/friendly… And fuck church too.

You know, complaining about Cee-Lo changing the lyrics to “Imagine” is a little hypocritical considering that the FFRF’s changing of the lyrics of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” didn’t get a complaint (
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2011/12/22/ffrf-places-full-page-ad-in-the-new-york-times/). Cee-Lo’s a Christian; anyone who’s listened to his music will know this. I’m an atheist, and Cee-Lo’s changing the lyric didn’t bother me, because I’d rather him change it to something he can say earnestly than to keep the lyrics as it is and sing something false to himself. Look, if you want to listen to John Lennon doing “Imagine”, listen to John Lennon doing “Imagine”. 

What FFRF did was create an obvious parody.

Cee Lo passed it off as if he were singing the original song but subtlety changed one of the lines. That’s not at all like what FFRF did.

Wait… in a world where all religion is true, does that include religions hardly anyone believes in any more? Does it include religions that everyone considers fictional?

In short, in a world where all religion is true, what are the odds of Chtulhu existing as well?

Regardless of intent, it is unacceptable (and, in the theater world, illegal) to knowingly change another’s work in performance.

Noel below us.

I don’t understand this attitude wrt music at all. This happens in almost every cover song anyone does. And when it doesn’t, usually that’s a sign of a bad cover.

> imagine no possesions

He was singing this in an expensive fur coat and probably had his usual “to show off all my money” diamond ear rings. If he was doing a parody of Imagine, then well done.

You obviously DO care because you took the time to respond about it here.

*eyetwitch*

It’s a cover, pretty much the definition of imitating someone else. If an artist wants to reinterpret a song, they should write a new song not disingenuously change an iconic line to practially invert its original meaning. Reinterpretation is more than just changing a line you don’t like.

A world where all religion is true is entirely impossible, even if you are religious. Most religions either don’t account for or (in every monotheistic religion) outright reject the notions of other gods. That’s of course leaving aside mutually exclusive versions of creation, prophets, history and rules.

There is no scenario where “all religion’s true” is a coherent sentence. All religions cannot be true. His explanation of “everyone could believe what they wanted” does not follow from the sentence. He should have (had he had the, erm, Imagination) gone with “and one religions’ true” which, while detestable, at least makes some sort of sense.

Cee Lo has now deleted all his responses to criticism.

Interesting, the question mark on his face, all religions true. He sounds like a Unitarian Universalist.

I heard the song last night and was outraged but I feel better this morning after seeing online that…I am not the only one…who was pissed off. I wonder how Yoko feels about it.

And by “that” I mean the change to the lyrics.

Religion is the problem

this moron might as well cover the great Beatles’ classic – All You Need Is Hate

It is interesting that he was OK with singing “Imagine there’s no heaven”, “above us only sky”, and “living only for today” but he change the one lyric that mentioned the word “religion”.
 
Most evangelicals I know (and I know a few) like to say that they are not religious, they have a personal relationship with Christ.  These evangelicals would probably ne OK with leaving in “no religion too” but would want to change those other lines. 
For most religions to have any meaning, there has to be a heaven, there has to be something above us other than sky, and there has to be something to live for other than just “today”.  Cee Lo has a strange version of religion where notions of an afterlife or the supernatural are not important but there being religion or any religion or all religion is very important.  I guess in his defense, if people recognized the legitimacy of all religions, then the significance of any one particular religion would be minimized to inconsequence and therefore there would be no reason to kill anyone for believing different things.  If that was his intended meaning, then I’m OK with it.  If he was sincerely implying that all religions could be true and really meaningful, then his personal theology is a bit incomprehensible. 
 
It would be like having the following lyrics:
Imagine there’s no countriesIt isn’t hard to doNothing to kill or die forAnd all scripture saying to kill infidels are true
 
or
 
And all things made up by man are true
 
or
 
And all logically contradicting propositions are true

It DOES go against the spirit of the song, though.  The opening line of that verse challenges the listener to “imagine there’s no country”.  It doesn’t say “Imagine we fixed our country,” it dares you to imagine a world that doesn’t even have these institutions to begin with.  The same with the line changed by Cee Lo: The song is asking the listener to question some of their core assumptions about how society functions.

I agree Imagine is not an inherently anti-religious song.  But the challenge to imagine a world in which instutitions we take for granted are not just “made better”, but instead don’t even exist… well, that’s pretty inherent to the song, I think.

If ceelo had parodied imagine by taking the music and arranging new lyrics, perhaps mocking lennon for his hypocrisy in playing ‘the game’ of the materialist society without really trying for revolution, i would ship major props.

It would also be a strange choice for a public new year’s celebration. But imagine is already a pretty strage choice, most people like the tune, don’t really think about the lyrics, and play it in inappropriate or strange circumstances anyway.

What i’m against is inserting subtley antithetical ideas into a song during a public performance. I’m also thoroughly amused that he left the ‘no country’ and ‘no possessions’ bits. No religion? That’s clearly too offensive, but actively wishing for the dissolution of the state and the capitalism that underlies it? Everyone should be fine with that.

There’s an amazing amount of butt hurt going on here. Cee Lo sang a song. He changed a few words. “Imagine” isn’t a religious text for non-believers.

I find the concept of all religions being true ridiculous, but great googly mooglies – take a chill pill folks.

And all this time I thought there were no sacred cows in atheism.

I’m actually surprised by the malice in some of these comments. If I didn’t know better I’d think I was reading comments from Christians about Jessica Ahlquist. Dear fellow atheists, please put this incident in perspective! He’s just an entertainer! He’s not a skilled activist or even mildly learned historian. It’s obvious where he was going with the changed lyrics, which is probably a huge personal step from the church beliefs he grew up with. To over-interpret his intentions is just silly.  He’s not that complicated a fellow and the change in the lyric wasn’t a non-sequitur: he definitely didn’t understand the original meaning of Lennon’s lyrics.  Thank your lucky stars he didn’t try to sample the song or change the tempo. And forgive the man for wearing that hairy coat–I’ll bet Lady Gaga wishes she’d had that on instead of the skimpy Versace and huge face mask she was wearing out in the cold last night in Time Square!

Talk about missing the fucking point. What’s next for Mr. Lo … finding the nice slave owners in Roots?

Dude… it’s a song. In The Voice, Xenia also sang Breakeven as “I’m still alive but I’m barely breathen – just prayed to a god that I do believe in”. It annoyed me at first, but then I realized that people do this all the time.

People re-write famous songs to their own image all the time. Remember “imagine there’s no pizza…” by a certain politician? I do agree that we should take the song back immediately (and who knows, remix a few others), but there’s no reason for all the hate in the forums over this.

There’s just something about this that seems very non-issue to me….maybe it’s just because I’m a musician myself, but I see nothing wrong with altering lyrics slightly. I do it all the time if I’m playing a song and I can’t remember the words exactly, and other times I might even do it on purpose (for example, my old band did a cover of Sonseed’s “Jesus Is My Friend” with the lyrics slightly changed to be about being raped by Jesus, mostly just for an inside joke and shock value amongst our circle of friends, and partially just to point out how little you actually have to change that song to make it creepy). Yeah, it might piss off fans of the original, but that’s really just a matter of personal taste as some people might actually think it’s better or funnier or more relevant after the changes. There are some “altered” songs I like better than the original.

I’m not saying anyone’s wrong for not liking this — more power to ya, as I don’t like it either — but there’s nothing morally reprehensible about what Cee Lo did. He just changed the lyrics to a song. Perfectly legal, perfectly normal in the music community. Whether or not it’s a religious tune, I’ve never in all my life been made aware of any sort of code of conduct amongst musicians that says you can’t change a song to be about something that it wasn’t intended to be about. Bands like Dead Kennedys used to do it all the time. It’s ultimately up to personal taste as to whether or not you like it after the changes. Which is fine, voice your opinion, but to act as if there is something inherently morally reprehensible about changing lyrics just because you disagree with them is a bit intellectually dishonest, I think.

That is WAY off the mark Ed.

“Imagine” someone taking a copy of Romeo and Juliet and “changing”  a few stanzas so Romeo and Juliet end up not dying.

Kinda fucks over the author’s version and statement don’t ya think? 

The biggest and most insulting issue here is the insult to Lennon. He wrote something that was meant to convey the exact opposite of what that fat hack did to it last night.

THAT is fucked up.

Atheists are looking like some bitches right now! Dude did a boneheaded ad lib, who gives a major fuck? A small fuck I can understand, say “That was wack.” and keep it moving.

Some of y’all are acting like he murdered Christopher Hitchens or some shit!! 😛

I’m annoyed, of course.  Atheists don’t get a whole lot of good “hymns” as it were, and Imagine is one of the best ones.  To hear its lyrics altered to suit the agenda of the singer seems at best cowardly and at worst intentionally disrespectful.

Back when I was in high school chorus, we did Imagine.  Previous to learning it in chorus, a lot of us had never really read all the lyrics; most of us thought of it as a nice “hippie-esque” tune (as someone above put it).  And boy did a lot of members of the chorus get pissed off at the idea of singing “and no religion too”.  Never mind that we spent the whole rest of the year doing “Gloria in Excelcis Deo”s and God and Jesus and Moses in damn near every song.  Never mind that those of us who didn’t believe in that still sang it the whole rest of the year.  It devolved (in true high-school drama queen fashion) into an angry shouting match during the class period.

“Guys,”  I tried to say, but was inaudible above the din, “This right here is John Lennon’s point.”

Ultimately a whole lot of members of chorus just stood with closed mouths while the remaining of us performed the song.

A bunch of pissed off teenagers could figure out “If the song you’re singing isn’t one with which you agree, your options are: sing it but not mean it, or not sing it.”  How come CeeLo can’t?

Altering a lyric that way, to me, is like altering Huck Finn, which is a whole other can of worms for another discussion.

I’ve read that John Lennon was worth $150 Million when he sang that song about imagining no possessions.  It doesn’t seem he really meant his lyrics.

Yeah, I mean, what kind of stuff did he do with his money?  Never, like, gave any to charity or anything, just spent it on fancy cars and blingity-bling-bling.  Since he had possessions when he wrote “Imagine no possessions”, then he totes couldn’t have meant it.

Well then, what did he do with his money?  On a quick search, I found no such philanthropic deeds, though I’m not saying he didn’t do any.  If he did a lot of selfless things with his money, then that is a good thing, but I do find having extravagant possessions to be contradictory to be contradictory to the lyrics in question.

it also amuses me that all these nasty comments are made on the “Friendly Athiest” website.  Come on guys!  Must you be as nasty as all the things you’re opposing?

Guess what, Cee Lo? We ALREADY live in a world where most people believe in some kind of religious tradition. John Lennon was making a revolutionary statement by indicating with his lyric that it would be a better world if we cared about eachother more than we cared about dogma.

This spineless rewrite is just another example of how everybody wants to be as sensitive as they can to religion, while simultaneously shitting on atheists. We exist, too! We live here, too! And sometimes songs are meaningful in a secular way, without you having to impose more religion on it!

As an atheist I don’t think there is anything wrong with someone saying, Imagine all religion’s true. The whole problem with religion, aside from them being man made, is that most people think their own religion is true and all the rest are wrong…hence the cause and perpetuation of hatred and wars. So what that he tweaked the song? Big deal. Get over it. Personally I think it would be easier to have “no religion” in the world rather than for all people to believe that, “all religions” in the world be true. The outcome would be the same though…Peace.

I have to point this out. Circa 5:51 he says, “Imagine ALL possessions.”

FYI.

Amnesty International receives royalties on Imagine to this day.

And what the hell does “butt hurt” mean, anyway? Sounds like a seventh-grade putdown to me.

I’m not the only one who heard that!  Aha!

“that fat hack” LOL!

Mmmmmyeah… I’m gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there.

Absolutley.  Plus if Dawkins, Dennett & Harris ever get together around a mic to sing in front of something as big as a New Years Eve show and sang “How Great Thou Aren’t” there would be death threats.  I find Ce Los lyric change to be downright sad but it should not surprise me coming from a theist.

hehe, watch tromeo and juliet… 

I know, it’s way easier to imagine all of them being false (because they are).

Yes, because it’s very important to fight people who don’t believe in the same things that you do.  Get off your soap box.  I cannot stand militants of any philosophy.  I would venture to guess that you’re the same brand of self-righteous and self-entitled person that he is. =_=

The way I see it, this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

West Side Story has Juliet live.

ya  fools dont mess with his lyrics because as he stated  he is more important than Christ himself.well he was very important to christ but not more important than the one who died for him.

If anyone remembers WKRP in Cincinnati, there was an episode that dealt with censorship, a preacher and the song “Imagine”. It hit the ball out of the park, and that episode was at least 30 years old.

We never learn….

Fine, make up lyrics.  Just make sure they make some sense, or some poetic sense.  “All religion’s true”?  So I’m gonna be reincarnated as a llama and also NOT?

Does that mean that he has pissed off the ordained ministers in his family?  I’m pretty sure they don’t think “all religion’s true”.

I am reminded of Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis. Whenever the God-bothering preachers needed to come up with a good sermon, they looted the writings of Robert G. Ingersoll, “The Great Agnostic.”

That’s nonsense. Many songs are very well re-interpreted simply by singing them differently.

Again, I think this cover sucks and I should add that everyone who loves the original, including myself, should indeed point out that this particular change is against the spirit of Lennon’s lyrics.

What caught me by surprise were all the comments that seemed to claim this was somehow unheard of in the music industry when as far as I can tell it’s common practice and generally a good thing.

^STANDING OVATION^ to Richard Wade!!! BRAVO!!!

How does anyone here know that Cee Lo didn’t get permission to change the lyric?  As an atheist, I guess I should be appalled, but frankly, I’m not really upset about this, as long as Cee Lo got permission to change it.  He’s free like all of us to tweak works.

Not changing the lyrics is a sign of a bad cover?  I’ve been doing it wrong!

How about pulling the mask of the ol’ Lone Ranger?

He changed the lyrics in his own song; fuck you to forget you. Seems to be a trait

Changing that important line from that iconic song to state the opposite of Lennon’s intended meaning was a lie.

You might as well have said that Johnny Cash lied when he changed “crown of shit” to “crown of thorns” in his cover of “Hurt.” Might there be people who heard his cover and not realized that he changed some words? Quite possibly. Is Cash responsible if someone makes such a mistake? Hardly. Lyric changes in covers are hardly uncommon, and the listener should expect as much. If Cee Lo Green were intending to misrepresent the changed line as Lennon’s original, then you’d have a good case that he was lying. As it stands, he has shown no more intent to deceive than Cash.

As it stands, we have a guy who apparently liked “Imagine” enough to sing it but not enough to use it as is. Woop-dee-freaking-doo.

That was entirely a mistake on my part, I’m not sure why I left that as is and didn’t fix it. I was thinking about covers and re-interpreting music and yes some lazy efforts involve not changing anything at all, but not changing the lyrics is by no meas a sign of a bad cover. My apologies.

So messing with John Lennon’s lyrics is bad, but messing with Jim Croce’s is okay?

How interesting! Thank you for the link. I am embarassed to admit ignorance of the show. When did it air? I would kind of like to see it in its entirety, especially since it is essentially tackling the same exact topic (and song!)

Here is a link to the full epsiode

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mif_ZA8orZ4&feature=related

“Cee Lo” is the corporate advertising mouthpiece for Sprite soda.

Okay, fair enough. The point is that the only way Cee Lo is lying is if he’s pretending that the changed lyrics were the originals–which he hasn’t done.

Wow people, everything has been done already. Praise to Lennon but props to Ceelo too, find something to believe in whatever your God but they’re all trying to get across the same message. It’s the fucked up & imperfect followers that damage the intentions

Parody, schmarody. If what Cee-Lo did is disrespectful, then what the FFRF did is, as well. The FFRF changed the lyrics to support a viewpoint entirely contrary to the original, EXACTLY what Cee-Lo did. Frankly, I find it silly to do in either direction. Really, it’s not a whole lot better than the “Tommy Hellfighter” and “Godstoppers” designs around; a pale, meaningless imitation of the original. 

Have you been drinking the “blood of christ” from the rectumry [sic] again?

If  a song had a verse that said “and all religions are shit” and it was changed for radio play to “and all religions are bad”  to avoid the 4 letter word, I would not be complaining as it is done all the time. I don’t like it particularly as I figure the artist that wrote it used certain words for a reason but I’ll accept it. The basic meaning is preserved, if not quite as strongly.

If then some prick changes the lyrics again to say “and all religions are good”, I have every right to get mad at it and wonder what made him change those lyrics/. Did he do it because he is religious himself? Because he is afraid of the religious complaining? Because he thought that was what the author meant, even though he wrote it differently?

No matter how I look at it, the answers are not pretty and they all involve either bad faith (no pun), deception or cowardice.

cool story bro

John Lennon’s mindset is what made the song so awesome.  Nobody has the right to change what he intended to say.  I am a writer myself. I sat and heard the reading of one of my plays once.  I squirmed in my seat as an actor took the liberty to insert words that I had never written, insulted other actors with words that were never written and felt he did nothing wrong after the reading. I was livid!  He changed my whole intent and the mood and honesty of my MY creative expression. Why didn’t he just go and write his own play instead of botching up mine?  In the theater we have an obligation to speak only what is written by the author.  It is considered an insult to the author when this is not done and a lawsuit has often been the end result.  I would think that it is an insult to a songwriter when his lyrics are changed, to a poet, etc.

If you do not believe in the songwriter’s lyrics; don’t sing the song.  Cee-lo, you had no right to do that.  It’s impossible for all fucking religions to be true because they are only beliefs, duh!  Or did God tell you to say that?  And can you prove that he did? Can you even prove there is a God? You religious fanatics are out of control.  You overstepped your boundaries!

What a arrogant thing to do in changing the lyrics to such a classic and highly regarded song…not acceptable, but c lo’s 15 minutes is almost up anyway.

You’re missing the point entirely. He didn’t change some lyrics to please the censors. This isn’t a matter of degree, but of kind.

In a way, all religions are true. They all teach intolerance and hate towards those of different religions. Leaving out the mythological stuff, what’s left? Intolerance and hate. 

Difference between most contemporary artists and John Lennon was that actually having a position that doesn’t pander to the largest crowd was what Lennon was doing.

But I cannot say I’m that disappointed. I never thought of Cee Lo Green as being anything but an entertainer and I don’t really see that as a particularly political act, but rather the standard weakness.

And yeah it’d been nice if people just left the song as is, and that it cannot be left alone is more a sign of our times than anything. Yet I am still much more worried about Liberty and Bob Jones University graduates populating school boards to have evolution and Jefferson removed and creationism and Calvin (and god!) instituted into the education of children.
 

Dude is a fat piece of shit to change this song.  And religion is disgusting. AND he can’t sing worth a shit. 

I can see that it’s frustrating for him to have changed the lyric. In fact I think frustrating is clearly an understatement and perhaps infuriating would be a better description. That doesn’t actually make it wrong for him to do it. As others have pointed out, it’s very common for artists to change song lyrics when they cover them, often to make them better suit that artist or their views. It’s not a deception unless he claims that Lennon originally wrote or performed it that way. Some people may not realise there’s been a change but that doesn’t mean the intent was deception. In any case, it may well prompt some people to listen to the original with original lyrics.

Maine’s my home too. We should, I don’t know, start a group! Cee-Lo’s a jerk. ’nuff said.

‘crown of shit’ to ‘crown of thorns’ (and,no,I’ve never heard the song with either lyric)doesn’t change the essential meaning of the sentiment, as does C Lo’s lyrical faux pas.
Either crown would be an unpleasant hat,  while ‘try not believing in a religion’ and  ‘all religious beliefs are good’ are  NOT similar sentiment.
If he has such respect for the song, and the man, he shouldn’t have  disrespected the sentiment in the song. 
If his beliefs differ,then he should, perhaps, write a similar melody with lyrics that reflect his own beliefs.

Cee lo is huge in an obese sort of way, I agree he sings more off pitch than on, his only claim to fame is using the word fuck in a song, wow how rebellious. Still at least he is not commenting on the presidential race, as funny as thas would be. What would be funnier still would be for slipknot to do a cover album of christian hyms and change the lyrics to make them more demonic, you tube sensation anyone

Technically, though, “all religion’s true” would include atheism because, as we all know, Christians believe atheism is a religion in itself. So big props to the guy for ripping a hole in the space/time continuum with his stupid paradox.

Not a big deal wade. No religion is not to far from every religion. It’s like the philosophy that a man that has everything has nothing. The phrase all religions are true is an equivalent effect, just using an opposite polarity. It’s gonna be ok… I promise. 

“Says the same guy who sang “Imagine no possessions” while wearing a fur coat and sporting gaudy gold jewelry…”
Yeah! Only a millionaire living in a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park can sing that!

Atheistards are disgusting trash. Bunch of mean-spirited assholes.

Lol, not anything like the pure and loving character you represent with your words.

Actually religion has been human kinds biggest and most epic wars since it was thought up. So in all actuallity John Lennen was right in his lyrics, along w many other things. Thanks Cee Lo, you just f’d up meaningful lyrics for a sad generation that has none to work with. Do the world a favor, and just make your own music. Don’t mess w the legends. I can’t believe you would even think that Lennon would be cool w that.

Oh, I’m sorry…. I actually meant that I coulnd’t IMAGINE that Lennen would ever be cool w that.

Thats makes me want to follow and believe in the bible even more than I already want to….   Nah…