10 Most Iconic Keyboard Songs In Rock Music
2. Imagine - John Lennon
Not every single song that's on the list has to necessarily be the most technical piano song of all time. If you were to ask John Lennon back in the day, even he would have told you that he wasn't the most gifted musician behind the keys, saying that he plays the piano far worse than he can play the guitar. When he hit upon just the right melody though, he found out that that's really all you need.
Before you even get to the lyrics, Imagine is one of the most gentle pieces of music in the entire rock canon, played just on Lennon's grand piano and creating a bed for his vocal to fit below. Since John wasn't known to be the greatest piano player, there are even a few out of the ordinary touches to get it just right, like the little chromatic figure that caps off every single phrase in between the vocals in the verse. With only a few pieces behind him, the listener focuses a lot more on the lyrics, which are among the greatest in Lennon's career.
Working with his partner Yoko Ono, most of these lyrics are ripped straight out of Yoko's poetry book Grapefruit, as John asks us to imagine what a world would be like without any violence, greed, or hunger to worry about. It would take a miracle for this world to come to that kind of utopia, but for those brief few minutes listening to this song, that kind of inner peace actually sounds possible.