Season of Glass | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | 3 June 1981 [1] | |||
Recorded | 1981 | |||
Studio | The Hit Factory, New York City | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 51:05 | |||
Label | Geffen | |||
Producer | Yoko Ono, Phil Spector | |||
Yoko Ono chronology | ||||
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Singles from Season of Glass | ||||
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Season of Glass is the fifth studio album by Yoko Ono, her first solo recording after the murder of her husband John Lennon. Season of Glass, released in 1981, reached number 49 on the US Billboard 200 albums chart, making it Ono's highest-charting solo album to date.
A music video was created for "Goodbye Sadness" featuring footage of Lennon and Ono together. The video was screened on the first episode of Saturday Night Live 's seventh season.
The album was released less than six months after Lennon's death and deals with it directly in songs such as "Goodbye Sadness" and "I Don't Know Why". Lennon and Ono's son Sean Lennon features on "Even When You're Far Away", recounting a story his father used to tell him.
The front cover features Lennon's bloodstained glasses (worn on the day of his death) positioned next to a half-filled (or half empty) glass of water, with a view of Central Park in the background. The choice of album cover was considered controversial by the record company:
I used a photo I took of John's blood-stained glasses on the record cover. The record company called me and said the record shops would not stock the record unless I changed the cover. I didn't understand it. Why? They said it was in bad taste. I felt like a person soaked in blood coming into a living room full of people and reporting that my husband was dead, his body was taken away, and the pair of glasses were the only thing I had managed to salvage – and people looking at me saying it was in bad taste to show the glasses to them. "I'm not changing the cover. This is what John is now," I said.
— Yoko Ono, [2]
Review scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [3] |
Robert Christgau | A− [4] |
Pitchfork | 7.7/10 (1999) [5] 8.8/10 (2023) [6] |
Rolling Stone | [7] |
Season of Glass charted at number 49 on the Billboard 200, making it Ono's highest-charting solo album to date. [8]
Billboard magazine gave the album a positive review, describing the album as Ono's "reaffirmation in life", containing a sense that she will "brave the crisis". [9] Billboard also described the album as having "a minimum of quirks" and sounded more commercial than any of her previous albums. [9] The songs "I Don't Know Why", "Goodbye Sadness", "Turn of the Wheel" and "She Gets Down on Her Knees" were chosen as the best cuts from the album. [9]
Music journalist Robert Christgau stated that "damn near every song [on the album] is affecting". [4] He described the transition from the "retrospective irony" of "Extension 33" to the "cut-off vulnerability" of "No, No, No" as "positively gut-wrenching". [4]
In a review for the 1997 reissue, Ryan Schreiber of Pitchfork called the album "a landmark in musical history" that "[encapsulated] Yoko's sadness" as well as the sadness felt around the world by John Lennon's death. [5] He added that the album showcased Ono's "remarkable strength" and described the bonus demo recording of "I Don't Know Why" on the reissue as "harrowing". [5]
Pitchfork's Jayson Greene reviewed the album a second time in 2023, giving it a higher score of 8.8 compared to the website's original 7.7 score in their 1997 review. [6] Greene described the album as a "survivor's statement" and the song "I Don't Know Why" as "harrowing and plainspoken" and "Goodbye Sadness" as "heart-rending". [6] He noted that the songs "Goodbye Sadness", "Toyboat", "Silver Horse" and "Mother of the Universe" featured Ono singing "gorgeous, long-breathed melodies [...] while the music gently rocks and sways". [6] Greene stated that the songs on Season of Glass were "lullabies to hope, delivered with the beatific calm of a dying opera heroine's final aria". [6] He did however feel that the omission of "Walking on Thin Ice" was "like a glitch in the historical record" and should have had a place on the album. [6]
Pitchfork listed Season of Glass as one of the best 200 albums of the 1980s. [10]
The 1997 Rykodisc reissue added bonus tracks of the single "Walking on Thin Ice" and an a cappella demo of "I Don't Know Why", recorded the day after Lennon's death. Demos of Season of Glass songs recorded with Lennon in the 1970s were also released as bonus tracks with other Ono reissues, including acoustic versions of and "Dogtown" and "She Gets Down on Her Knees" on Approximately Infinite Universe , "Will You Touch Me" on Fly and "Extension 33" on A Story . The unreleased 1974 album A Story also contained several songs that were later re-recorded for Season of Glass, namely "Dogtown", "She Gets Down On Her Knees" and "Will You Touch Me". It was also released by Rykodisc in 1997.
Three songs from this recording were reworked by other artists on the remix tribute album Yes, I'm a Witch in 2007. Anohni reworked "Toyboat", The Apples in Stereo reworked "Nobody Sees Me Like You Do" and Jason Pierce from Spiritualized reworked "Walking on Thin Ice".[ citation needed ]
Holly Miranda covered "Nobody Sees Me Like You Do" as a B-side to her single "Forest Green, Oh Forest Green" and on her EP Choose to See, which was included with the purchase of her 2010 album The Magician's Private Library . [11]
All tracks are written by Yoko Ono
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Goodbye Sadness" | 3:48 |
2. | "Mindweaver" | 4:24 |
3. | "Even When You're Far Away" | 4:12 |
4. | "Nobody Sees Me Like You Do" | 3:31 |
5. | "Turn of the Wheel" | 2:41 |
6. | "Dogtown" | 3:22 |
7. | "Silver Horse" | 3:03 |
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
8. | "I Don't Know Why" | 4:18 |
9. | "Extension 33" | 2:45 |
10. | "No, No, No" | 2:43 |
11. | "Will You Touch Me" | 2:37 |
12. | "She Gets Down on Her Knees" | 4:13 |
13. | "Toyboat" | 3:31 |
14. | "Mother of the Universe" | 4:26 |
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Walking on Thin Ice" | 6:00 |
2. | "It Happened" (Remixed Version) | 5:08 |
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
15. | "Walking on Thin Ice" (Extended version) | 6:55 |
16. | "I Don't Know Why" (Demo) | 2:11 |
Technical
Chart (1981) | Peak position | Total weeks |
---|---|---|
Australian Albums Chart [14] | 62 | 5 |
Norwegian Albums Chart [15] | 31 | 5 |
Swedish Albums Chart [16] | 35 | 1 |
UK Albums Chart [17] | 47 | 2 |
US Billboard 200 [18] | 49 | 9 |
Country | Date | Format | Label | Catalog |
---|---|---|---|---|
United Kingdom | 3 June 1981 [1] | LP | Geffen Records | K 99164 [19] |
LP + 7" [12] | ||||
Germany | 8 June 1981 | LP | GEF 99 164 [20] | |
Cassette [21] | ||||
United States | 12 June 1981 | LP | GHS-2004 [22] | |
Cassette | GEF M5 2004 [23] | |||
Japan | 1981 | LP | P-11045J [24] | |
Australia | GEF M5 2004 [25] | |||
United States | 10 June 1997 [26] | CD | Rykodisc | RCD 10421 [13] |
United Kingdom | 1997 | |||
Japan |
Double Fantasy is the fifth studio album by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and the final one before his death. Released in November 1980 on Geffen Records, the album marked Lennon's return to recording music full-time, following his five-year hiatus to raise his son Sean. Recording sessions took place at the Hit Factory in New York City between August and October 1980. The final album features songs from both Lennon and Ono, largely alternating between the two in its track listing. Other tracks recorded by Lennon from the sessions were compiled by Ono for release on Milk and Honey in 1984.
Wedding Album is the third and final in a succession of three experimental albums by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. It followed Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins and Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions. In Britain, the album was released credited by "John and Yoko", without last names mentioned. In the United States, it was released credited by "John Ono Lennon & Yoko Ono Lennon."
Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions is the second of three experimental albums of avant-garde music by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, released in May 1969 on Zapple, a sub label of Apple. It was a successor to 1968's highly controversial Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins, and was followed by the Wedding Album. The album peaked in the United States at number 174, 50 places lower than the previous album. The album, whose title is a play on words of the BBC Radio show Life with The Lyons, was recorded at Queen Charlotte's Hospital in London and live at Cambridge University, in November 1968 and March 1969, respectively. The Cambridge performance, to which Ono had been invited and to which she brought Lennon, was Lennon and Ono's second as a couple. A few of the album's tracks were previewed by the public, thanks to Aspen magazine. The album was remastered in 1997.
Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins is the first of three experimental albums released by John Lennon and Yoko Ono on Apple Records. It was the result of an all-night session of musical experimentation with Yoko in John's home studio at Kenwood, while his wife, Cynthia Lennon, was on holiday in Greece. Lennon and Ono's 1968 debut recording is known not only for its avant-garde content, but also for its cover, which shows the couple naked. This made the album controversial to both the public and the parent record company EMI, which refused to distribute it. In an attempt to avoid controversy, the LP record was sold in a brown paper bag, and distributed by Track and Tetragrammaton in the United Kingdom and the United States respectively. Two Virgins, while failing to chart in the UK, reached number 124 in the US. The album was followed six months later by Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions.
It's Alright (I See Rainbows) is the sixth solo album by Yoko Ono, and her second release after the murder of husband John Lennon. As a variation of a theme concerning its predecessor, the back cover features a transparent image of Lennon in a then-contemporary photo of Yoko and Sean, depicted in Central Park. Released in 1982, all songs were written, composed, arranged, produced, and sung by Ono. It charted at #98 in the US.
Onobox is a 1992 comprehensive 6-disc collection of Yoko Ono's work from 1968 to 1985. The discs are grouped by era and theme. Disc one centers around the albums Fly and Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, while Disc two features nearly the entirety of Approximately Infinite Universe in a different running order and most of the tracks remixed exclusively for this boxed set. Disc three features the entire Feeling the Space project, which was originally conceived and recorded as a double album before being edited down, while disc six is the previously unreleased 1974 album A Story, which was later reissued separately with an expanded track listing, along with the rest of Ono's back catalogue.
Every Man Has a Woman is a tribute album to Yoko Ono for her 50th birthday. It contains covers of her songs from the albums Approximately Infinite Universe (1973), Double Fantasy (1980), Season of Glass (1981), and It's Alright (1982). The album was purportedly one of John Lennon's projects, but he died before he could see its completion. The liner notes for the vinyl LP feature an essay by Ono entitled "A Crystal Ball".
New York Rock is an off-Broadway musical by avant-garde artist Yoko Ono. It is a fictionalised account of her marriage to songwriter and Beatle John Lennon. The musical contains many songs from Ono's albums throughout the years, as well as several new tracks, "Warzone" and "Where Do We Go from Here", which were reworked for inclusion on Rising.
A Story is an album by Yoko Ono, recorded in 1974, during the "lost weekend" sessions in which John Lennon produced Walls and Bridges. It was unreleased until the 1992 box set Onobox, which featured material from A Story on disc six. It was only properly released as an individual album 23 years later in 1997, with the reissuing of Ono's back catalogue by Rykodisc. The reissue added three bonus tracks, including home demos and a live recording from the Starpeace tour.
Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band is the debut solo studio album by Japanese artist and musician Yoko Ono, released on Apple Records in December 1970 alongside her husband's album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. The album features Ono's vocal improvisations accompanied by the Plastic Ono Band, with the exception of "AOS", on which she is backed by the Ornette Coleman Quartet.
"Walking on Thin Ice" is a song by Yoko Ono, released in 1981. She and John Lennon concluded the recording of the song on December 8, 1980. It was upon their return from the recording studio to The Dakota that Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman. Lennon was clutching a tape of a final mix of the song before it was mastered when he was shot. The song was both a critical and commercial success for Ono.
Fly is the second album by Yoko Ono, released in 1971. A double album, it was co-produced by Ono and John Lennon. It peaked at No. 199 on the US charts.
"No, No, No" is a song by Yoko Ono from her 1981 album Season of Glass. The song is one of the most dramatic tracks on the album to address her husband John Lennon's murder. The song begins with the sound of four gunshots and Ono screaming.
"Never Say Goodbye" is the second single from Yoko Ono's 1982 album It's Alright . Like many of Ono's songs from this period, the lyrics deal with her emotional healing following the murder of her husband John Lennon. The upbeat new wave song samples a recording of Lennon screaming Yoko's name from their Wedding Album, followed by her son Sean waking her, as if it were a bad dream. The song garnered minor airplay upon release. "Loneliness" appeared on the B-side. The 1995 New York Rock version was also released as a single.
Approximately Infinite Universe is the third solo album by Yoko Ono, released in early 1973 on Apple Records. A double album, it represents a departure from the experimental avant garde rock of her first two albums towards a more conventional pop/rock sound, while also dabbling in feminist rock. It peaked at number 193 in the United States. The 1997 CD reissue on Rykodisc added two acoustic demos of songs from this era, that were later released on 1981's Season of Glass. It was released again by Rykodisc in 2007.
Feeling the Space is the fourth solo album by Yoko Ono, released in 1973. It was her last one to be released on Apple Records.
Starpeace is a 1985 concept album by Yoko Ono, designed to spread a message of peace around the world as an opposition to Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense system. As with most Ono albums, it did not chart extensively but the single release of "Hell in Paradise" reached #16 on the US dance charts. The album was subtitled An Earth Play for Sun and Air in the booklet and on the disc.
"Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him" is a song by Yoko Ono from the album Double Fantasy with John Lennon. Other versions were released, including one released as a single where Ono's voice was removed, leaving what had been Lennon's backing vocal as the primary vocal.
"Move on Fast" is a song by Yoko Ono, originally released in 1972 on the album Approximately Infinite Universe, and on the B-side to the single "Now or Never". The song was later included on Ono's compilation album Onobox.
Japanese multimedia artist, singer and songwriter Yoko Ono has released 14 studio albums, eight collaborative albums, and 40 singles as a lead artist. Married to English singer-songwriter and the Beatles member John Lennon until his murder in 1980, she has contributed several B-sides to his singles from late 1960s to the 1980s. Ono released her debut studio album Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band in December 1970, faring poorly in the United States. Similar moderate success was achieved with her follow-up records Fly (1971) and Approximately Infinite Universe (1973).
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