The Beatles: 10 Perfect Solo Albums
1. Plastic Ono Band - John Lennon
As the Beatles were starting to reach the end of the line, John Lennon was going through his own private Hell. After getting hooked on heroin and trying to quit junking up his veins, he was recommended to be treated by a psychotherapist, undergoing primal scream therapy which helped him work out the problems that he had from his childhood. When he finally came out on the other side, Plastic Ono Band was the wiser John Lennon looking at the world around him for the first time.
While other Lennon songs had talked about politics before, the messages on here are a lot more universal, talking about the broken parts of the working class system on Working Class Hero or doing your best to hold on in a scary world on songs like Isolation. With a fairly minimal setup, each of these songs seem at their wit's end sometimes, as John sounds like he's trying to split his voice apart on Well Well Well, before finding some sort of peace on a song like Love, knowing that he will always have a companion in Yoko.
Most of this album may be a bit of a difficult listen for some of the more pop friendly Fab fans, but this was the first time that we got to see what the real version of John was like, taking his old pop sound and putting it through the ringer. The dream of the Beatles may have been over, but that doesn't mean that we had to stop living. John managed to move on, and the rest of us had to accept that.