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Cee Lo Green Will Not Apologize For Changing John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ Lyrics

The singer tweets, then deletes, an explanation for switching the words to John Lennon's famous song during his New Year's Eve performance.

January 3, 2012 6:29am

Cee Lo Green Will Not Apologize Changing John Lennon's 'Imagine' Lyrics — NEW YORK, NY - MAY 21: Grammy award-winning singer and songwriter, Cee Lo Green performs at the Range Rover Evoque Live concert on May 21, 2011 in New York. The global interactive music event was held as part of the Pulse of the City Campaign to launch the all-new 2012 Range Rover Evoque at Winter Garden
Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Range Rover

Cee Lo Green rang in the New Year with a New Controversy. The “Forget You” singer fueled outrage after his performance on NBC’s Times Square telecast for doing what many John Lennon fans deemed sacrilege: changing the lyrics to the late Beatle’s song “Imagine” to say “all religion is true” instead of “and no religion too,” as was Lennon’s original verse.

Green, who moonlights as a judge on the NBC talent contest The Voice, performed alongside Justin Bieber, Hot Chelle Ray, Pitbull, and Diego Torres on the Ryan Seacrest co-hosted Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve special.

Lennon fans immediately pounced on Twitter following his solo rendition of the classic tune.

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“Cee-lo ruining John Lennon….not everything needs a remix. Although the message is relevant,” wrote a reader named D’Nai. Said @kevinkieninger: “Cee Lo. There’s some songs you just don’t cover. Like anything by the Beatles or John Lennon.”

“The whole point of that lyric is that religion causes harm. If “all [sic] relgion’s true” it would be a pretty bleak place,” remarked @geekysteven, summing up Lennon’s anti-religion philosophy.

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Green responded to his critics on the micro-blogging site with an explanation, which he deleted after apparently changing his mind.

“Yo I meant no disrespect by changing the lyric guys!” he wrote in his erased post on the matter. “I was trying to say a world were u could believe what u wanted that’s all.”

But Green, in a seeming change of heart, replaced that message with this one: “Happy new year everyone!!! Now playing: we just disagree [by] dave mason.” Tuesday morning, the singer posted another update saying he was listening to The Beatles’ 1966 song “I’m Only Sleeping.”

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