John Lennon was an English musician, best known as the co-founder, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. After three experimental albums with Yoko Ono, using tape loops, interviews, musique concrète, and other avant-garde performance techniques, Lennon's solo career properly began with the 1969 single "Give Peace a Chance". Lennon then released two more singles, "Cold Turkey" (1969) and "Instant Karma!" (1970), and a live album, Live Peace in Toronto (1969), before the official break-up of the Beatles.
Lennon's first solo album after the Beatles' break-up was Plastic Ono Band, released simultaneously with Ono's album of the same name. He released the album Imagine the following year, which became his most critical and commercial success. His 1972 political themed album Some Time in New York City received scathing reviews and performed poorly commercially. Lennon's next two albums, Mind Games (1973) and Walls and Bridges (1974) were better received and had more commercial success. In 1975, Lennon released his covers album Rock 'n' Roll before retiring from music to focus on raising his newborn son Sean. He returned to the music industry in 1980 with the album Double Fantasy, but was murdered three weeks after its release. Following his death, the 1984 album Milk and Honey was posthumously released.
In 2020, to celebrate what would have been Lennon's 80th birthday, Ono and her son Sean released the box set Gimme Some Truth. The Ultimate Mixes, which contained newly remixed versions of 36 of Lennon's songs. In 2018, 2021 and 2024, super deluxe box-sets of Imagine, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Mind Games were released.
Lennon had 25 number-one singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart as a writer, co-writer or performer.
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