Double Fantasy LP

In one of music history's crueler twists of fate, John Lennon was just beginning to make an aesthetic/commercial comeback when he was assassinated in 1980. Earlier that year, the release of DOUBLE FANTASY (after a long layoff from recording, mostly spent raising his young son Sean) let Lennon fans know that he and Yoko were still capable of flaunting their creativity on record. Lennon had matured as a person as well as an artist over the preceding several years, after years of personal trials, and his personal renaissance was evident on DOUBLE FANTASY, with it's cheery, accessible pop tunes celebrating the simple joys of family life.

This not being a McCartney album, things never get overly sentimental, even on Lennon's odes to Sean (the shimmering ballad "Beautiful Boy") and Yoko (the '50s-influenced "[Just Like] Starting Over.") Lennon was too complex an artist to release a mindless happy-face album, and even his sunniest observations are deepened by the complexities of his compositional genius. For her part, Yoko contributes some of the finest songs of her career, like the simple but movingly poetic "Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him." Lennon's older, wiser worldview is best summed up by the philosophical (and engagingly bouncy) "Watching the Wheels."