About

John Lennon Beats His Wife refers to a series of memes in reference to musician John Lennon of The Beatles, who is largely known for peaceful world-loving songs such as "Imagine," who beat his first wife, Cynthia Lennon. Primarily created via image macros, such memes using a variety of formats are shared to call attention to this lesser-known side of Lennon, as well as merely for humorous intent.

Origin

Though the phrase "John Lennon beats his wife,"^[5] or variations of it, has been said colloquially for years, memes referencing the concept appeared online as early as 2014. One of the earliest posts to call attention to this was posted on Tumblr when a debate about known domestic abusers was brought up on the platform. In the post, Tumblr user grrspt listed off a group of people who were guilty of domestic abuse but are not known for it, with John Lennon being one of the first listed. This exchange was screenshotted and uploaded to Know Your Meme on September 28th, 2014, by user ChinRakka,^[1] where it received over 4,100 views in seven years (shown below, click to expand).

One of the first direct call-out memes about Lennon's domestic abuse came from the subreddit /r/OkBuddyRetard where it was uploaded by Redditor^[2] boi_pucci on January 25th, 2020, receiving 275 upvotes in two years (shown below).

Spread

The concept behind these memes began to spread slowly from the sporadic posts in the 2010s, particularly in 2020, with a new post popping up every couple of months. Another example of the meme came from Facebook^[3] where the now-deleted post on July 28th, 2020, using a Running Arnold Schwarzenegger meme with an image of Barnes & Noble was shared (shown below).

Another variation of the meme started to take hold in 2021 in which different characters from media would be seen repeating the same phrase, ending with the catchphrase "music was better when John Lennon was beating his wife," with an example using Stingy from Lazytown uploaded to OkBuddyRetard on October 25th, 2021, by Redditor^[4] jamjam1090, earning 5,400 upvotes in five months (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References