Yoko Ono's Bold Self-Tribute Album and Vindication

# January 17, 1984: Yoko Ono Releases "Every Man Has a Woman"

On January 17, 1984, Yoko Ono released one of the most fascinating tribute albums in rock history – but here's the twist: it was a tribute album to *herself*.

**"Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him"** featured an all-star lineup of artists covering Yoko's songs, effectively recasting the most controversial figure in Beatles lore as a legitimate songwriter worthy of serious artistic interpretation. It was a bold, audacious move that could have backfired spectacularly, but instead became a genuine moment of vindication.

The album's roster read like a who's-who of early '80s music royalty: Elvis Costello, Harry Nilsson, Rosemary Clooney, Eddie Money, and Sean Lennon (then just 8 years old). But the crown jewel was **John Lennon's** final recorded performance – a hauntingly tender version of the title track that he completed shortly before his murder in December 1980.

This recording of John singing Yoko's song carried profound emotional weight. Here was the world's most famous Beatle, in one of his last acts, championing his wife's artistry – the same woman millions had blamed for breaking up the Fab Four. The track became an almost unbearably poignant statement about their partnership, recorded in the summer of 1980 when they were in their creative renaissance during the *Double Fantasy* sessions.

The album also featured Elvis Costello covering "Walking on Thin Ice," the very song Yoko and John had been mixing on the night of John's assassination. Costello's nervous, jittery interpretation captured the avant-garde essence of Yoko's original while making it accessible to new wave audiences.

What made this release particularly significant was its timing. By 1984, Yoko had spent over a decade being vilified by Beatles fans, dismissed by critics, and reduced to a punchline. This album forced a reassessment. When credible artists like Costello and Nilsson treated her compositions with respect and creativity, it became harder to maintain the narrative that she was merely a talentless hanger-on.

The project challenged listeners to separate Yoko Ono the cultural lightning rod from Yoko Ono the artist. Her compositions – quirky, vulnerable, and decidedly uncommercial – revealed themselves as genuinely interesting when interpreted by different voices. Songs like "No, No, No" and "She Gets Down on Her Knees" took on new dimensions through these covers.

The album didn't set the charts on fire, but it didn't need to. Its importance was symbolic – a statement that Yoko Ono's artistic contributions deserved consideration independent of her role in Beatles mythology. It also represented one of the earliest examples of an artist curating tribute interpretations of their own work, a concept that would become more common in later decades.

For Yoko herself, the album was deeply personal – a way of preserving John's final gift to her art while also asserting her own creative identity as she navigated widowhood and a changing music landscape.

Today, "Every Man Has a Woman" stands as a curious artifact of the early '80s and a pivotal moment in the long, slow rehabilitation of Yoko Ono's reputation as an artist in her own right.


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