You’ve got to love America, the home of the forever pissed off. Thanks to cable news networks that run 24/7 and a little thing called the internet even the smallest storm in a teacup can quickly escalate into a full-blown tempest.
Enter Cee Le Green, the man who brought us dance floor fillers ‘Crazy’ and ‘F*ck You’ who was chosen by the City of New York to perform at their annual New Years celebrations in Times Square.
But rather than perform one of his own songs, Green instead opted to cover John Lennon’s very appropriate classic solo single ‘Imagine’. His choice of song however is not the source of the controversy but rather how he sang it.
Green took the liberty to change one of the key lines in the song that had the effect of dramatically changing the intent of the original song, and music fans are not happy about it.
Instead of singing the original lyrics, “Nothing to kill or die for / And no religion too,” Green switched it to “Nothing to kill or die for / And all religion’s true.” The subtle but powerful change has upset many people with many jumping on internet forums and Twitter to vocalise their disappointment with Green.
One fan wrote “To turn any aspect of the meaning a full 180 degrees is terrible. If there is such a thing, John Lennon turned over in his grave.”
The singer quickly defended himself online jumping on his Twitter to tweet “Yo I meant no disrespect by changing the lyric guys! I was trying to say a world were [sic] u could believe what u wanted that’s all.”
After a series of fiery exchanges the singer (or his publicist) decided it would be a better idea to just delete any tweet relating to the incident until the heat died down.
You can watch footage of Cee Lo Green singing John Lennon’s Imagine on New Years Eve below. Let us know if you think the lyric change was disrespectful.
