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In 2022, John Lennon's son performed 'Imagine' for the first time after swearing he never would

"Within this song, we’re transported to a space, where love and togetherness become our reality, if but for a moment in time."

via Julian Lennon/YouTube and Wikimedia Commons

John and Julian Lennon both performing "Imagine."

In 1971, a year after the break-up of the Beatles, John Lennon released his most important piece of music, his single “Imagine.” The song is an appeal to humanity’s goodness and urges the listener to "join us" in visualizing a world without war, hunger, or greed.

The song provides a glimmer of hope in that if we can visualize a perfect world, then maybe one day it will be achievable. Over the past 50 years, the song has become a secular hymn that can conjure hope in the aftermath of the most tragic events. The song was played by Queen at Wembley Arena after Lennon was murdered in 1980. Steve Wonder sang it at the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics to honor the lives of those lost at the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. Neil Young played it at the 9/11 Tribute to Heroes concert. And who could forget the infamous celebrity singalong to "Imagine" in 2020 barely a week into the initial COVID pandemic shutdown?

“Imagine” is widely seen as Lennon’s signature song that encapsulates his artistic persona, which is no small feat given the earth-shattering effect the songs he wrote with the Beatles have had on the world.

John Lennon, Beatles, musician, Imagine, magnum opusimagine the beatles GIFGiphy

Given the song’s incredible power, Lennon’s son Julian vowed never to perform it in public. Julian has had success as a musician over the years, most notably with his 1984 hit, “Too Late for Goodbyes.” He’s also a philanthropist who has produced numerous documentaries.

The war in Ukraine pushed Julian to break his vow and he performed a beautiful rendition of “Imagine” as part of Global Citizen’s social media rally, “Stand Up For Ukraine” on April 8, 2022. The campaign worked to raise money for the war-torn country, a cause Julian still adamantly supports three years into the conflict.

During the 2022 performance, Julian was accompanied by guitarist Nuno Bettencourt, who is best known as the lead guitarist of the Boston rock band Extreme and a member of Rihanna's touring band.

"The War on Ukraine is an unimaginable tragedy... As a human, and as an artist, I felt compelled to respond in the most significant way I could," Lennon wrote in the video's description in 2022. "So today, for the first time ever, I publicly performed my Dad’s song, IMAGINE. Why now, after all these years? — I had always said, that the only time I would ever consider singing ‘IMAGINE’ would be if it was the ‘End of the World’…But also because his lyrics reflect our collective desire for peace worldwide."

Watch:

- YouTubeyoutu.be

Lennon went on to say he was influenced to sing the iconic song "because within this song, we’re transported to a space, where love and togetherness become our reality, if but for a moment in time… The song reflects the light at the end of the tunnel, that we are all hoping for…

“As a result of the ongoing murderous violence, millions of innocent families, have been forced to leave the comfort of their homes, to seek asylum elsewhere,” Lennon concluded his message. “I’m calling on world leaders and everyone who believes in the sentiment of IMAGINE, to stand up for refugees everywhere! Please advocate and donate from the heart. #StandUpForUkraine.”

John Lennon, Imagine, song, piano, musicianJohn Lennon recording at the piano. via Wikimedia Commons

Lennon’s decision to never play “Imagine” was a wonderful way to honor his father’s legacy by respecting the power of his song, but John would probably be proud if he knew that he sang it at a time when we all need to imagine “all the people living life in peace.”

Julian Lennon continues to advocate for those suffering in the world by raising awareness and offering help through his charity, The White Feather Foundation, which was established in 2007 and exists "for the Conservation of Life" and provides aid for the environment, the preservation of Indigenous cultures, and access to clean water, education, and health.

In 2023, The White Feather Foundation launched an emergency campaign alongside World Central Kitchen to feed those in need in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict. And earlier this year, Lennon and The White Feather Foundation donated a split $10,000 to MusiCares and FireAid in response to the Los Angeles wildfires in January.

Clearly in all that Lennon does to help the world and others, whether through his philanthropy or his music, he's supporting the vision of "Imagine" and making his father proud.


This article originally appeared three years ago. It has been updated.

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Family

How big data revealed a powerful forgotten ally in the fight against Zika.

In 2015, the Zika virus cropped up in Latin America. In doing so, it planted itself firmly in our worry-filled human minds, too.

Photo from Luis Robayo/AFP/Getty Images.

Zika is a mosquito-borne virus that can make people very sick. It causes a variety of problems, including birth defects in unborn children.

In February 2016, the Brazilian chapter of UNICEF (the United Nations program aimed at supporting women and children in the developing world) wanted to help educate people about the disease. So they started to develop an awareness campaign.

The right message to the right people can save lives — but how do you make sure your message is right?

In most stories, this would be the place where the organization comes up with a game plan, runs it through a focus group, hires some graphic designers or copywriters, then distributes the new message. Maybe afterward, they'd do an analysis to see if they aimed right.

But in this case, that's not what UNICEF did. They suspected there might be a better way.

Before they even started on the campaign, UNICEF teamed up with Facebook to figure out who their audience for Zika actually was.

“In order to address a problem, you have to understand how the public is thinking about it," says Molly Jackman, a research manager at Facebook.

UNICEF ended up working with Facebook and another partner, ActionSprout. They pulled a bunch of anonymous, aggregated data from Brazilian Facebook, trying to find out what the public really was saying about the virus.

They ended up finding some surprising information.

One of the big secret success factors to Zika awareness? Men.

A doctor told this dad his child might be in danger because of Zika. Photo by Diego Herculano/NurPhoto.

Conventional thinking was that because everyone was talking about Zika's dangers to pregnant women, any messages about health and safety should be targeted at women. Seems obvious, yeah? But it turned out men weren't exactly being silent about it.

In fact, men were responsible for the majority of posts about Zika. Moms weren't the only ones worried about Zika's potential effect on babies. Dads were too.

UNICEF realized it had accidentally ignored this huge group of people in its messaging. So it created a post specifically aimed at engaging the dads of Brazil in fighting Zika.

Este pai quer ajudar outras famílias a conviver com a microcefalia.Quando soube que a esposa estava grávida, Felipe se...

Posted by UNICEF Brasil on Friday, 29 April 2016

Based on the Facebook analysis, UNICEF was also able to hit a couple of other areas, like preemptively reinforcing that Zika wasn't a laughing matter. They also created Q&A sessions with experts and expanded their education to other mosquito-based disease.

All this work paid off. An after-the-fact analysis showed that people who got this info were not only more engaged, aware, and more likely to take action to prevent the spread of the disease, but their results beat out a traditional campaign.

Social media is a tool that can be used for good, and this story shows that.

Like all tools, we should be mindful of how we use it, of course. But the right tool in the right hands can make a huge difference.

“Trends in the public conversation are vitally important to health organizations," says Jackman. "That information can save lives.”

The internet is a big, weird place. But it's pretty cool that in this case, we harnessed it for good.

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This 'Stranger Things' star is one in a million. So is his genetic disorder.

The Netflix retro sci-fi hit "Stranger Things" brought a lot of wonderful things into our lives — including the phrase "cleidocranial dysplasia."

When I watched the show, I just assumed that Dustin's oft-repeated comeback about his "cleidocranial dysplasia" was a just fancy scientific way of saying "late tooth development" or something.

All GIFs from "Stranger Things."

But turns out, it's actually an incredibly rare congenital disorder that affects one in a million people. Symptoms can include underdeveloped bones and joints, absent collarbones, shortened limbs, skull deformities, and, yes, dental abnormalities like adult teeth that fail to come in when they're supposed to.

Which is really all just a fancy scientific way of saying that Dustin is awesome.

That might seem like a deep-cut from a totally random medical text. But there's a good reason it was mentioned in the show.

Gaten Matarazzo, who played Dustin on the show, has cleidocranial dysplasia in real life.

While his is a more mild case — he really is missing some teeth, which makes him speak with a lisp, and he's missing his collar bones, which means he can do some crazy things with his shoulders — that doesn't mean that his life has been easy.

The 14-year-old has had to endure several surgeries, and it's also made it harder for him to find work as an actor.

"It was always because of my lisp, and me being shorter and having the teeth issue, that was always the reason they couldn’t cast me,” he explained in an interview with BBC Radio.

"They couldn’t write in a disability into the show because they had already written the script."

That made it all-the-more powerful when the Duffer Brothers, who created "Stranger Things," not only cast Matarazzo in the show, but also embraced his condition and made it a part of the character. (Of course, that wasn't the only part of his character that the writers embraced...)

Matarazzo is using his newfound fame to raise awareness about this rare condition too.

He's opened up to People magazine and the BBC, spreading knowledge about the condition far and wide.

"I just want to raise awareness for it and let people know that it's not something they should be afraid of showing," he told the British talk show host Jonathan Ross.

That sudden limelight has also had a tangible impact on people like Matarazzo. "It really helps them come out of their shells a little bit. Because a lot of people have it much worse than I do and it affects them much worse than it does me," he told the Daily Beast. "Because this was in the show and this is the first time they’ve heard of it outside the doctor’s office, it made them feel really good and it inspired them."

Despite the setbacks that he's faced in the past, Matarazzo's success today is a moving reminder that representation for folks with disabilities is important.

In addition to "Stranger Things," he's even appeared on Broadway several times, and let me tell you: This 14-year-old kid with missing teeth, and a lisp, can belt out show tunes like there's no tomorrow.

There was a time not too long ago when all this would have been impossible. But thanks to people like Gaten Matarazzo, representation is making the world brighter — and fairer — every day.

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The splendid way this viral photo of Chris Hemsworth is helping fight mental illness.

Now this is good publicity.

The celebrity tabloid news industry is basically a collection of our* guilty pleasures rolled into one massively problematic dumpster fire.

*The fact TMZ is bookmarked in my web browser means I am certainly part of the problem.

Photo via iStock.

Body-shaming, invading privacy, luring famous kids into photos using other children as bait — sometimes it feels like there is no lowest low when it comes to the paparazzi and our infatuation with famous folks.

Take actor Chris Hemsworth, for instance.

Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images.

He's currently filming his new flick, "Thor: Ragnarok," alongside co-star Tom Hiddleston in Brisbane, Australia.

And the two are drawing massive amounts of attention on the set.

But instead of all that star-studded excitement going to dumpster fire waste, one seemingly run-of-the-mill tabloid photo of Hemsworth is actually doing a whole lot of good for a worthy cause.

Livin, a small charity fighting the stigma surrounding mental illness, has been thrust into the spotlight thanks to the star.

The Australian group's name and logo appeared on a sweatshirt Hemsworth was sporting on the set after he learned about the nonprofit from a friend of the group's co-founders, BuzzFeed reported. The actor wanted to help get the word out about the charity.

And, wow, did he ever.

Since Hemsworth was spotted in his Livin gear, sales for the brand's apparel line have "spiked," according to the nonprofit.

"You can't really put it into words," cofounder Casey Lyons told Gold Coast Bulletin about the difference Hemsworth's support has made.

"Chris liked the look of it and said, 'That's a cool shirt,'" Lyons said. "When he heard the message behind it, he was more than happy to help support it."

Proceeds from apparel sales benefit Livin's mission of combating stigma and getting the word out that "it ain't weak to speak" — a motto crafted to encourage others to seek help.

Fighting the stigma is a cause near and dear to the cofounders' hearts because they lost a dear friend to suicide a few years back — a loss that inspired them to launch Livin in 2013.

Ending stigma surrounding mental illness is a key component in making progress on this issue.

While mental illness is relatively common — about 1 in 5 American adults live with some form of it, like depression or bipolar disorder, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — harmful negative stereotypes remain.

Those living with a mental illness aren't weak, dramatic, or more dangerous than anybody else; our society has unfairly labeled them as such.

That's why it matters for a guy like Hemsworth to throw his Thor-like weight behind the issue.

"It’s so great to see someone of [Hemsworth's] profile getting behind the charity," cofounder Sam Webb explained.

Now that's some celebrity news I can consume guilt-free.

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