Woman Is the Nigger of the World

Woman Is the Nigger of the World is a play that was written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono and released City in September 1972 on the album Some Time in New York. Previously, it had already appeared together with Sisters, O Sisters as a single. Lennon himself described it as " the first song of the women's movement ."

Meaning and origin

The title of the piece goes back to an interview with Yoko Ono in 1968, she gave the British women's magazine Nova. Lennon used this provocative thesis Ono to his increasingly feminist views of the public present. His lyrics are about the oppression of women in a male dominated society. In March 1972 he took on the piece together with the New York group Elephant's Memory, whose saxophonist Stan Bronstein helped to shape the recording. It was produced by Phil Spector song.

Effect and criticism

After the premiere of the piece live in Dick Cavetts American TV show, it has been criticized especially because of the use of the pejorative " nigger " in the title. Various radio stations boycotted the broadcast of the song.