This one has been around a while, but I just heard it and so I pass it along to you -- proof that, yes, mash-ups can still surprise ya!

(Thanks, Ross.)

John Lennon died 30 years ago today, which means we'll have the obligatory decimal-year-anniversary remembrances all over the place. Below is a remembrance of a different sort, originally published five years ago...

Lost in a whiteout
By David Menconi, News & Observer
Dec. 8, 2005

"Imagine" wasn't the only song the late John Lennon wrote, nor was it his biggest hit. But it might as well be. Lennon died 25 years ago today, which means you're going to see and hear an awful lot of "Imagine" for the next few days -- tribute and cover versions, plus the 1971 Lennon original played on radio, television and boomboxes at vigils.

If you're anywhere near a television set today, you'll surely see the famous "Imagine" video of Lennon sitting at a white piano in a white room. Gazing into the camera with rose-colored glasses, he solemnly intones a Utopian vision:

Imagine all the people, sharing all the world ...

"Imagine" isn't just Lennon's "My Way" or "White Christmas," it's his "I Have A Dream" speech. Like Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous 1963 oration, "Imagine" has become so iconic that it glosses over everything else about Lennon -- good, bad or ugly.

Never mind that Lennon the artist wrote better, more forceful songs ("Working Class Hero" and "#9 Dream," to name just two), or that Lennon the man could be caustic and ungracious. The same 1971 album with "Imagine" also had a vicious put-down of his former Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney, "How Do You Sleep?" But the image of Lennon that lingers in the popular imagination is the earnest, well-meaning peacenik ironically suggesting the joys of "no possessions" from the comfortable confines of a mansion.

Perhaps such an image reduction is inevitable as time goes by, especially when the end of Lennon's life was so unexpected and senseless. A quarter-century after that awful night he was gunned down in New York City, Lennon has been gone for far longer than the time he spent in the public eye. Eldest son Julian Lennon is 42, two years older than his father when he died. Younger son Sean Lennon is 30, John's age when the Beatles broke up.

Lennon once said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, but in many ways "Imagine" has become bigger than its creator. The song's elegiac tone instantly made it the theme music for the worldwide mourning after Lennon's death in 1980, and it has since become the go-to song for invoking a sense of high-minded gravitas -- comfort food in times of trouble.

Everyone from folk singer Eva Cassidy to progressive-metal band A Perfect Circle has covered "Imagine" over the years, and director Roland Joffe played it over the closing sequence of his 1984 Cambodian civil war epic "The Killing Fields." Neil Young covered "Imagine" at the "America: A Tribute to Heroes" telethon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and Madonna used it as a set-piece cover on last year's "Re-Invention World Tour." It's also the theme song for Amnesty International.

To cover "Imagine" is to push a button, declaring that one is for "good things" and against "bad things." By now, the song's emotional impact is no more specific than a sort of warm, fuzzy vagueness. But "Imagine" preaches some notions that are profoundly antithetical to Western culture, especially mainstream America. Despite its subdued tone and a gently lilting piano hook, "Imagine" envisions a radically remade world where equality reigns and there are no countries, possessions or religion.

No one really notices that anymore because the song's ubiquity has rendered it as banal and meaningless as "Have a nice day." So it's a blank slate. Cabaret singer Liza Minnelli can belt "Imagine" out as a show tune that wouldn't sound out of place in a Broadway theater. Or country singer Dolly Parton can cover it as a piece of humanistic liturgy on her new album, "Those Were the Days" (Sugar Hill Records), flashing a peace sign in the song's video.

Stranger still is Ray Charles' version on his new posthumous album, "Genius & Friends" (Rhino/Atlantic Records). It's a straight-up gospel rendition featuring "American Idol" Ruben Studdard and the Harlem Gospel Singers -- even though "Imagine" specifically puts religion on its "do not fly" list. That doesn't stop Charles and Studdard from singing the song's lyrics about imagining "no heaven ... no hell below us ... no religion" with fire-and-brimstone fervor, sailing right over the inherent contradiction between anti-religious lyrics and churchy delivery.

But it doesn't even sound out of place, because "Imagine" isn't ultimately that demanding a song. Perhaps the reason the song has been so embraced over the years comes down to one simple thing: "Imagine" never demands that you actually do anything, just to ... imagine.

VH1 is beginning a 3-week block of Beatles programming tonight, starting with the Emmy-nominated documentary series on the band, "The Beatles Anthology."

The in-depth documentary series will simulcast on VH1 and VH1 Classic tonight, Sept. 2, and Sept. 9 at 9pm. 

Then on Tuesday, Sept. 1, VH1 Classic begins "9 Days of Beatles," showing a series of classic Beatles concerts and films. It begins with a Beatles Retrospective on September 1 at 8pm, followed by the band's classic movie, "Help!" at 9pm.

Happy new years day, everybody. As for 2009, let's hope it's a good one, without any fear.

I pretty much got over beloved songs turning up in commercials a long time ago. But the next frontier is a bit more disturbing -- who knew that we'd see John Lennon in a commercial 28 years after his death?

The eyes of the sports world will be on Charlotte tonight, for the big "Monday Night Football" matchup between the Panthers and Bucaneers. Which brings to mind something awful that happened exactly 28 years ago, when a game was upstaged -- and one of the few announcers of his day to get the significance of that was in the booth. Click through for more.

Today is "Peace Sunday," the International Day of Peace. So at the very open-minded Methodist church my family attends, this morning's late service began with a performance of John Lennon's 1971 peace anthem "Imagine" -- a song I dig, but one that's still mighty odd to hear while seated in a church pew. For some ruminations on that, see this remembrance of Lennon and "Imagine," originally published on the 25-year anniversary of his death.