Tuesday 5 February 2008

John Lennon: "god is a cunt"



Let me get straight to the point: John Lennon called god a cunt, and nobody noticed. I'm not saying he said it when he was a kid, or in Yoko's ear so that nobody heard, but on this record that he released in 1970 when he was the biggest music star in the world... and nobody noticed! That's just too far-fetched to be true, leading me to conclude that everyone noticed and that there must be a Truman Show-sized conspiracy to keep me out of the picture. You devious scoundrels! I've got your number now, oh yes!



The album is John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970), released just a few months after the Beatles split up, and the song is "God". It's actually an incredible record - and not just because Lennon calls god a cunt on it - and I do intend to write a bit more about it generally soon. For now, let's focus on the cunt. Just to check I wasn't going mad, I've handed my headphones to all my work colleagues and asked them the simple question: what does John Lennon sing at the start of this song? What are the first four words?





Pause it at 17 seconds and he's quite clearly said "god is a cunt", as all both of my colleagues heard too. Of course, officially the lyric is "god is a concept... by which we measure our pain". But that only becomes clear after he repeats the line, where the "concept" is far clearer. It's deliberately unclear, and we know this because the full first verse goes:

"God is a cunt(concept)
by which we measure our pain
I'll say it again
God is a concept
by which we measure our pain".

Listen to both times he apparently says "concept" - he enunciates it much more carefully the second time, and the backtrack is even introduced by an admission of ambiguity ("I'll say it again"). The first time, his "o" sounds awfully like a round "u", he barely whispers the "ep" part of "concept", and the soft c and t merge together phonetically, resulting in a clear "god is a cunt" with only a little bit of contextual disguising so as to not kick off World War III.

Nice one John, very cleverly done. You're right, he is. That's not the shocking part. The shock is that nobody seemed to notice. Compare and contrast:

Results 1 - 10 of about 17,400,000 for "john lennon" (0.14 seconds)
So yes, the internet does know who John Lennon is...
Results 1 - 6 of 6 for lennon "god is a cunt" (0.27 seconds)
and only 2 of those 6 are referring to the song!
What is going on?
No-one's even posted it to Kiss This Guy!

Now, either there's a massive conspiracy around this whole shebang, or a lot of people have dirty ears, or I've got a dirty mind. I know which one I suspect to be true, and I'm not happy about it - you treacherous, lying bunch of toe-rags.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PS. This post was going to be titled John Lennon invented the Cookie Monster and called god a cunt, because in track 2 "Hold On" you can clearly hear Lennon go "COOKIE!" in his best gruff blue-puppet voice. Then I found out that the Cookie Monster was a 1967 creation! and not the child-of-the-80s that I believed. Still, as if Lennon's many musical talents weren't enough - and his calling god a cunt too, remember that! - he also does a Cookie Monster impression! Or did, rather. What a sad loss.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

I noticed!

Knudburger said...

I noticed too, the first time I heard the song. I was shocked, I tell you..

Anonymous said...

What a lot of crap this post is. Do some center channel extraction and you can clearly hear the "s" sound in 'concept', followed by the 't' at the end. So if anything he'd be saying "god is a cunst", which is clearly horseshit because he says "concept".

Besides, he believes that god is just a concept for measuring pain, not something that actually exists. Someone who didn't believe in god would never call god anything except imaginary.

Anonymous said...

Me and a mate were enormous Beatles/Lennon fans when in the sixth form. In our art room we were allowed to play music and I had this album on vinyl. I was convinced he said 'God is a cunt.' I remember playing that first line over and over again and after a while everyone heard 'God is a cunt' as well.

Lennon was always playing verbal jokes and I think was one of them.

Yoko'sMum said...

I remember quite clearly on the record "Imagine", Lennon sings, "Imagine there's no people sitting around wasting their time writing bollocks on the internet". That guy was way ahead of his time, because the internet wasnt even properly invented yet.

George Bush Snr actually did give the order for Lennon to be shot though. Sounds funny until you read the book by a prominent British Lawyer Fenton Bresler, "Who killed John Lennon". Now there is a REAL conspiracy for you.

I dismiss all conspiracies, except for this one. Oh, and the moonlandings. And I'm pretty sure that thing about Jesus and Hitler shagging might have some legs too.

Anonymous said...

"Someone who didn't believe in god would never call god anything except imaginary."

That's the logic of a pocket calculator. Artists play philosophical gymnastics with god and religion all the time. Check out XTC's Dear God.

I calculate there's a 93.14159265% chance that John and Phil deliberately made it sound like 'cunt'. I reckon they double tracked it with one track saying 'cunt' and the other saying 'concept' and lowered the level of the 'concept' track. John was fond of saying 'cunt' and i'm pretty sure crazy Phil wouldn't of had a problem with it.

Anonymous said...

No, he has a Liverpudlean accent.

Source: I'm Liverpudlean.

Just chill dude.

Plus, if he exists, God is a cunt anyway.

Unknown said...

In poetry it is word sounds, repetition, rhyming, rhythm which can all help us to find additional meanings or give extra in a text. At least if the writer is skilful enough, any content is deliberate. But ultimately it is our interpretation which counts...

I heard CUNT!!!

then he says it again..C O N C E P T very clearly..

So ladies and gentlemen ..the jury says...

Anonymous said...

On this it might be that word, but on a you tube search you here "concept" both times. I think the idea that he would have said anything else is silly. At the time there would have been queues of "born agains" wanting to kill him.

Anonymous said...

Well, it's true though..

Unknown said...

He definitely says god is a CUNT. And if you see all the things that are happening in the world today you will realize he is right. THINK 9/11.

Unknown said...

Yes he did say it but only on early presses of the album. It was overdubbed on later releases...for Pc reasons.

Unknown said...

Get yourself a decent sound system.

Unknown said...

PS. Also why did god cause the GRENFELL TOWER TRADEGY? He gotta be a CUNT aint he.