"
Be My Yoko Ono" is a song by the
Canadian musical group
Barenaked Ladies.
The song was written by
Steven Page and
Ed Robertson and first appeared on their 1989 demo tape,
Buck Naked. It was also included on their second and third tapes,
Barenaked Lunch and
The Yellow Tape, as well as on their major-label debut
Gordon, and on their 2001 compilation,
All Their Greatest Hits.
Background and content
In the song the narrator explains that he would be willing to give up everything to be with the person he loves by comparing their relationship to the one between
Yoko Ono and
John Lennon.
In 1991, the band entered the song in
CFNY-FM's annual “Discovery to Disc” contest. When the station asked Steven Page for the master tape, he “didn’t have the heart” to tell them that they already had it: a cassette that they had recorded in his basement. He told them that they would have it by next week, and submitted a studio re-recording of the song within the week. This version of the song would later end up on
The Yellow Tape, which managed to achieve platinum status in Canada. The song became the band's first single and won the band the grand prize of $100,000 to make a full-length CD, which, in their case, was 1992’s
Gordon.
Music video
The song was also the band's first "video"; in 1990, the band squeezed into
Citytv's
Speaker's Corner booth (which allows anyone to film a two-minute movie of themselves for one dollar) and performed a shortened version of...
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