Billboard Top 40 Singles 1971 #64: ‘Power To The People’- John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band. April 3, 1971.
- Single: ‘Power To The People’- John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band
- Record Company- Apple
- Genre: Rock
- Written by John Lennon
- Time: 3:15
- B-side:’Touch Me’ [Yoko Ono]
- Grade: A+
- Peaked at #11 9 weeks in Billboard Hot 100
John Lennon went through a lot of phases in his life-in the early 1970’s he was going through his radical political phase. ‘ Later in his life Lennon would claim to be embarrassed by the song that it didn’t come off the way it could have. I have always liked it a lot. The great Hunter S. Thompson would write that the song came ‘ten years too late.’ Bernie Sanders revived the song in 2016 for his presidential campaign.
John Lennon in his brief solo career- 1970-75 and then the brief comeback in the last weeks of his life had 17 Hot 100 singles- with 13 making the Top 40. He was the last ex-Beatle to hit #1 with ‘Whatever Gets You Thru The Night’ in 1974 and ‘[Just Like] Starting Over’ in 1980.
slicethelife 
This song grew on me through the years…Now I like it a lot.
same here- i don’t think i cared for it a lot when i bought the shaved fish compilation where i first heard it.
Shaved Fish is where I first found his solo material also.
my first reaction to a lot of his solo work- after having digested The Beatles catalog first- was quite jarring…
Yes…he was still melodic but much more upfront.
Well, “Shaved Fish” was my entry as well in Lennon’s solo career. I got it on vinyl – guess it must have been in the late ‘70s – and that copy is still floating around somewhere. Last but not least, it also took me some time to appreciate John’s solo music the way I do it today.
Most of Lennon’s “avant garde” music has aged quite well.
This is the song that carries the line, “I’d like to ask you comrades and brothers, “How do you treat your woman back home?”” This I think is a scathing remark directed to activists who lead a double life of some sort. Supporting women’s rights publicly but male chauvinists inside them in several ways. John has at least grown to be conscious
…of his own limitations