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Lyrically Speaking: ‘I Just Shot John Lennon’ by The Cranberries wasn’t an insensitive recollection

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Several events in history changed the landscape of music forever. Many naturally hinge on the social or political, but after December 8th, 1980, the music world was irrevocably altered. The death of John Lennon didn’t just supercharge a domino effect of grief across the world; it changed the way many approached music, with some, including The Cranberries, directly addressing what happened that fateful night.

Incorporating such dark historical tonality in their music wasn’t exactly out of place. After all, The Cranberries exuded the type of cultural confidence most associated with the masters of protest music, but that’s precisely what gained them their swell of loyal fans. Instead of approaching such events as outsiders, they did so from the inside, using personal experience to ripple out and touch the walls of political unrest.

While many songs come under the broader political-leaning Cranberries umbrella, this approach is what made their song ‘I Just Shot John Lennon’ so enticing. Aside from the starkness of the title itself, The Cranberries always knew how to reconstruct historical events less as a means to misconstrue what actually happened but to achieve the opposite. In other words, they knew how to utilise the shock factor to get people to listen.

The song was named after a famous line uttered by Lennon’s murderer, Mark Chapman, who, upon being asked if he knew what he had just done, responded eerily with the infamous quip: “I just shot John Lennon.” It’s soberly matter-of-fact when written down on paper, which likely struck a nerve with Dolores O’Riordan and countless others who found it difficult to believe somebody could be so detached in the aftermath of such a horrific choice.

Still, rather than writing solely from his perspective, she was also inspired by the negative treatment of Yoko Ono by fans of The Beatles and the media and how she became a scapegoat for all of their problems. “I could relate to the fact that when you’re a famous person, everybody wants to tell you what you should do and who you should be with,” she explained. “Everybody judges you all of the time. I always thought that people judged his relationship with Yoko a little too much, that obviously, the man was in love with the woman, and [people] should have left him alone.”

This underlying resonance on O’Riordan’s part not only adds an additional layer to the song but also enhances its sense of immediacy alongside the physicality of the gunshots themselves. While the first verse relies heavily on the scene setting, with the singer utilising words like “fearful” and expressions like “paid the price” to create a sense of impending doom, there’s no doubt that she wanted to leave little room for misinterpretation, placing the story of Lennon’s death as the sole centrepiece.

The repeated phrase, “John Lennon died”, only adds to this bluntness before the focus shifts slightly to Ono and how her reputation and perception changed after his death: “With a Smith and Wesson, 38th
John Lennon’s life was no longer a debate / He should have stayed at home, he should have never cared / And the man who took his life declared, he said / I just shot John Lennon.” The only true moment of emotionality on O’Riordan’s part emerged with the line: “What a sad and sorry and sickening sight”, before the song ends to the sound of five gunshots.

Some have long taken issue with the song, arguing that it makes light of Lennon’s death and trivialises it, but The Cranberries never bothered themselves with half-baked ideas, even when they might seem it to the unsuspecting outsider. In reality, the moments in the song when things might seem a little too much or as though O’Riordan may have gone a little too far don’t necessarily indicate insensitivity. Rather, it shows a songwriter who has little time for misinterpretation and would rather force listeners to confront the hideousness of the situation.

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