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John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s classic song “Imagine” was performed by a group of international artists during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
The song’s first verse was performed at the Olympic Stadium by Tokyo’s Suginami Junior Chorus as a replica of the earth, made up of over 1,800 drones, circled the sky above us. After the kids performed, the ceremony rotated to feature pre-recorded video performances.
Each celebrity represented a different continent: John Legend represented the Americas and Keith Urban represented his homeland, Australia.
Spanish singer Alejandro Sanz represented Europe, while Afropop star Angélique Kidjo represented Africa.
“Imagine” has been performed at several Olympic Opening Ceremonies in the past, most recently at the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea. It was also played at the London 2012, Turin 2006 and Atlanta 1996 Games.
“If the Games were a song, ‘Imagine’ would be the song,” TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie said after the performance ended.
Ono wrote on Twitter that the song was inspired by beliefs she and Lennon shared.
“IMAGINE. John and I were both artists and we lived together, so we were inspired by each other,” she wrote, along with a photo of her and Lennon. “The song ‘Imagine’ embodied what we believed together at the time. John and I met – he’s from the West and I’m from the East – and we’re still together.”
On social media, some joked that a song that invited listeners to “imagine there is no country” might not be the best choice to start an event focused on international competition.
Others have drawn comparisons to the last time there was a celebrity video performance of “Imagine”. Gal Gadot and other celebrities including Pedro Pascal, Natalie Portman and Will Ferrell sang the song in March 2020 as a show of unity at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the video was widely mocked on social media.
Some saw the opening ceremony performance as redemption for the song after the celebrity’s previous performance.
This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the song, which was written in 1971. In 1980, Lennon said he saw the goal of asking people to imagine peace as similar to carrying the Olympic torch.
“We are not the first to say ‘Don’t imagine a country’ or ‘Give peace a chance’, but we carry this torch, like the Olympic torch, passing it hand in hand, to each other , to every country, to every generation, “Lennon said in an interview with Rolling Stone, his last interview before he was killed three days later. “And that’s our job.”
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