Popularity
The song reached number 2 in the UK Singles Chart where it was kept out of the top slot by The Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women", and number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US.
The song quickly became the anthem of the anti Vietnam-war movement, and was sung by half a million demonstrators in Washington, DC at the Vietnam Moratorium Day, on 15 October 1969. They were led by the renowned folk singer Pete Seeger, who interspersed phrases like, "Are you listening, Nixon?" and "Are you listening, Agnew?", between the choruses of protesters singing, "All we are saying ... is give peace a chance".
The British group Yes also paid tribute to Lennon's words on their 1971 release "The Yes Album." The first track on side two is the song, "I've Seen All Good People" which is divided into two parts, namely "Your Move" and "All Good People." The words, "all we are saying is give peace a chance" are sung as background vocals near the end of "Your Move." The song also contains the lyric, "Send an instant karma to me." "Instant Karma!," released in 1970, was the name of the third single by John Lennon and Yoko Ono/The Plastic Ono Band.
Written by John Lennon while The Beatles were officially still together, the song is one of three Lennon solo songs, along with "Instant Karma!" and "Imagine", in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. Being one of John Lennon's most famous songs, it has since been released on almost every compilation of his solo work.
Read more about this topic: Give Peace A Chance
Famous quotes containing the word popularity:
“There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.... He was fixed in the house of lords, that hospital of incurables, and his retreat to popularity was cut off; for the confidence of the public, when once great and once lost, is never to be regained.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of “spirit” over matter.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)