10 Rock Songs That Were Written As An Apology

For a man who preached about peace throughout most of his life, John Lennon was never the most peaceful person to deal with. Going through his Beatle days and even into his solo career, John's brutal upbringing as a child led to him dealing with pain in the wrong ways, resorting to violence most of the time and being a bully to nearly everyone around him, from his romantic partners to even the Beatles in their early stages. It would take a long time for him to atone for the way he acted, but Jealous Guy was at least a step towards redemption.

Around the time that he was writing songs like Imagine, Jealous Guy reads like an apology from Lennon to every single person that he hurt, saying that his jealousy tends to get the better of him. Originally writing this in India during the Beatle days, Lennon feels almost scared playing this song on record, as if he knows how much harm he's caused and wondering when it's going to come back around.

It's not like this song immediately gets Lennon off the hook for what he did, as he spent years of his life trying to apologize for the way he treated his bandmates and especially the women in his life. There's a lot of darkness in a song like this, but John was never one to claim to be a good role model for people. He was human just like everyone else, and it was going to take a long time to come to terms with how he treated people as a young man.