{"id":36998,"date":"2025-11-12T12:20:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T12:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/36998\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T12:20:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T12:20:18","slug":"did-you-know-that-queen-wrote-a-song-about-john-lennon-in-1982","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/36998\/","title":{"rendered":"Did You Know That Queen Wrote a Song About John Lennon in 1982?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/americansongwriter.com\/tag\/queen\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Queen<\/a> wrote about a lot of things throughout their long and storied career, from love to loss to complex storylines found in rock operas like \u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d. Queen also paid homage to one of their real-life contemporaries in a particularly bittersweet piece of work. That piece of work is the 1982 song \u201cLife Is Real (Song For Lennon)\u201d. And unless you\u2019re a diehard Queen fan, you may have never heard this John Lennon tribute before. I highly recommend you give it a spin.<\/p>\n<p>Freddie Mercury wrote this unique song as a tribute to Lennon. However, it\u2019s also a unique work for Queen for another reason. Namely, \u201cLife Is Real (Song For Lennon)\u201d was one of the extremely few and far between songs that Mercury wrote where the lyrics were fleshed out before the actual song.<\/p>\n<p>The Legacy of \u201cLife Is Real (Song For Lennon)\u201d by Queen<\/p>\n<p>Freddie Mercury wrote the lyrics to \u201cLife Is Real (Song For Lennon)\u201d as a tribute to the former Beatle. For reference, Lennon was tragically shot and killed in 1980 by a former fan. Mercury\u2019s tribute to Lennon wasn\u2019t as dance-friendly as many of the other songs on the album it was featured on. Rather, the song has a soulful energy to it, and pays homage to the lyric \u201clove is real\u201d from Lennon\u2019s song \u201cLove\u201d from the 1970 album John Lennon\/Plastic Ono Band. And some of the lyrics of Mercury\u2019s tribute are absolutely gutwrenching.<\/p>\n<p>Sleeping is my leisure<br \/>Waking up in a minefield<br \/>Dream is just a pleasure dome<br \/>Love is a roulette wheel.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLife Is Real (Song For Lennon)\u201d made it to the 1982 album Hot Space after it was completed. The song, along with covers of \u201cImagine\u201d, also made it to the band\u2019s live tour that followed. Though, \u201cLife Is Real (Song For Lennon)\u201d never made it to the setlists of the band\u2019s European leg of the tour. Rather, it was only performed a handful of times in North America.<\/p>\n<p>Queen\u2019s sweet ode to John Lennon was never released as a single. Still, it did receive quite a bit of airplay on the radio. So much so that this non-single from Hot Space managed to peak at No. 57 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. I\u2019d like to imagine Lennon would be proud.<\/p>\n<p>Photo by Photos\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Queen wrote about a lot of things throughout their long and storied career, from love to loss to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[2298,9,24,63,666,122,124,123,1572],"class_list":{"0":"post-36998","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-john-lennon","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-queen","13":"tag-queens","14":"tag-queens-headlines","15":"tag-queens-news","16":"tag-rock-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}