On This Day in 1972, John Lennon Released a Controversial Song He’d Spend Years Defending

April 24, 2026 3:39 pm

Both as a solo artist and a member of the Beatles, John Lennon pushed boundaries—sonically, lyrically, every way possible. Whether he was comparing the Fab Four’s popularity to that of Jesus Christ or later doubling down on that comment in “The Ballad of John and Yoko”, the man inspired as much ire as he did devotion. On this day (April 24) in 1972, Lennon again found himself in hot water with the public when he released “Woman Is the N****r of the World” in the United States.

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Yoko Ono Actually Came Up With the Title

The contentious track appeared on Some Time in New York City, John Lennon’s fourth collaboration with wife Yoko Ono as the Plastic Ono Band.

Ono had coined the phrase four years earlier in a December 1968 interview later published in Nova magazine. A self-identified radical feminist, she invoked the racial epithet to make the case that women were the most oppressed group on the planet.

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When Lennon released the song, many listeners understandably did not agree with his use of the racial slur—even in service of what he claimed was a larger point about inequality.

According to the Los Angeles Times, more than 300 AM radio stations received the song in the United States. Only two of those outlets would play it. One jukebox programmer told Billboard, “John Lennon should quit trying to make points with the American public and do his own thing, like go back to England.”

In spite of nationwide pushback, “Woman is the N****r of the World” managed to rise to No. 57 on the Hot 100.

How John Lennon Defended the Song

In an interview with KDAY News Radio later that year, John Lennon stuck by his use of the inflammatory term.

“I agree that a lot of people, black and white, are slaves in the world,” he said. “But each of them has his own slave, and that’s usually his wife. If a man is brutalized, he brutalizes his wife. Being from the working class, I know what that’s about. A man comes home from work, sick to death of the whole business, he doesn’t know how to express it any other way than to take it out on the woman. And that’s what happens. Anyone who denies the fact that women are having the worst of all worlds is obviously not seeing things clearly.”

Lennon would maintain this position for the rest of his life, reiterating his point in his final interview on Dec. 8, 1980. Just 40 years old, he died that night of gunshot wounds in front of his New York City Home.

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