10 Darkest Rock Albums Of The 70s

Breaking up a band as big as the Beatles would have been catastrophic for any musician to deal with. After being in the biggest band in the world though, John Lennon wasn't afraid of alienating his audience, especially after making some of the most wild experimental music of the time with his partner Yoko Ono. There was a lot of anger underneath it all, and John let all of his demons loose on his first solo record.

After practicing primal therapy before the album's release, a lot of these songs just feel like John venting about his repressed trauma. Across every single song, John almost seems to be dealing with a different phase of his life, whether it's addressing his separation issues that he had with his parents on Mother or the corrupt outlook he sees in the track Working Class Hero. In between the topical songs though, you can hear him really hurting in the vocal booth, like the back half of Well Well Well where he lets out some of the most cathartic screams on a rock record.

Even when he tries to be optimistic on songs like Hold On or Love, you can still feel that there's a lot of raw wounds he has to work through. Just as he would imply on the track God, John only had himself to hold onto, and this is the record that he needed to make to feel like a human being again. No matter how much we may have wanted the Fab Four to go on forever, this was a wake up call for the fans as well. The dream was over and it was time to move on.