We all know John Lennon’s songs from his solo career, but we’ve never heard them sounding this good. In honor of what would have been his 80th Birthday (October 9th, 2020), 36 of his songs have been completely remixed from the master tapes. The collection is called Gimme Some Truth.
The result is that we hear John Lennon’s voice more fully. John tended to have producers process his voice with effects. The new collection remixes the songs to better reflect John Lennon’s natural voice. The instrumentation also benefits from the new mixes. The recordings simply sound warmer and clearer. Even though I’ve purchased these songs in multiple ways before, the improvement is worth the expense to me. The main presentation is the deluxe 2-disc set. There is also a one-disc 19-song version with selected songs from both discs (which are shown below).
(Click lists separately or zoom to enlarge.)
The collection was curated by Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon, and skillfully remixed by engineer Paul Hicks. One could quibble with some of the song selections, and wish that the title wasn’t Gimme Some Truth, which had already been used for a John Lennon collection. They could have just gone with the collection’s subtitle: The Ultimate Remixes.
(My CD’s)
It’s always interesting to see what songs are most popular as they sell on iTunes. “Instant Karma”, “Imagine” and “Watching The Wheels” are the top three. “Instant Karma”, “Stand By Me”, and “Mind Games” were especially improved by the remixes, and really, all the songs are better.
The change in the quality of the audio will help John Lennon’s songs be better received by future listeners.