Imagine is the second solo studio album by the British musician John Lennon, released on 9 September 1971 by Apple Records.

The lyrics reflect peace, love, politics, Lennon's experience with primal scream therapy and, following a period of high personal tensions, an attack on his former writing partner Paul McCartney in "How Do You Sleep?".

Recording was scheduled to begin in a week's time at Lennon's Ascot Sound Studios, at his Tittenhurst Park residence.

[3] The first songs recorded were "It's So Hard" and "I Don't Want to Be a Soldier" in February 1971 at Ascot Sound Studios, during sessions for Lennon's single "Power to the People".

Lennon enlisted help from Nicky Hopkins, members of the Apple band Badfinger, Alan White and Jim Keltner.

[2] Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono flew to New York on 3 July to continue sessions for the album the next day, at the Record Plant.

[7] Extensive footage of the sessions, showing the evolution of some of the songs, was originally filmed and titled Working Class Hero before being shelved.

– a song written in retaliation against McCartney's alleged personal attacks on Lennon and Ono, on his recent Ram album.

I don't really go 'round with those thoughts in my head all the time ..."[11] The track "Imagine" became Lennon's signature song and was written as a plea for world peace.

Early editions of the LP record included a postcard featuring a photo of Lennon holding a pig, in mockery of McCartney's similar pose with a sheep on the cover of Ram.

[23] In 1972, Lennon and Ono released a 70-minute film to accompany the Imagine album which featured footage of them at their Berkshire property at Tittenhurst Park and in New York City.

[2] Several celebrities appeared in the film, including Andy Warhol, Fred Astaire, Jack Palance, Dick Cavett and George Harrison.

Derided by critics as "the most expensive home movie of all time",[citation needed] it premiered to an American audience on TV on 23 December 1972.

[2] Reviewing the album for Rolling Stone in 1971, Ben Gerson said it "contains a substantial portion of good music" but considered Lennon's previous LP to be superior.

[34] Alan Smith of the NME lauded the album as "superb", "beautiful" and "one step away from the chill of his recent total self-revelation, and yet a giant leap towards commerciality without compromise".

"[35] In Melody Maker, Roy Hollingworth named Imagine the best album of the year and Lennon's finest work up to that point.

[25] Reviewing for Mojo in 2000, Jon Savage said the preponderance of mid-tempo tracks partly explained the album's popularity among Britrock bands, yet this quality made some of the songs drag.

He admired Harrison's slide guitar playing in the "sinuous and spacy" soundscape, but found that the album "contains both the best and the worst of [Lennon] – the idealist and the ranter, the righteous and the vindictive anger – and as such remains more patchy than its iconic status might allow".

[42] Lennon later expressed his displeasure with the more commercial sound of the album, saying that the title track was "an anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic song, but because it's sugar-coated, it's accepted".

[43] In a November 1971 interview for Melody Maker, McCartney spoke positively of Imagine, considering it to be less political than Lennon's previous solo albums.