John Lennon had a knack for stand-alone Top 40 songs. As the following countdown shows, five of his 14 trips to Billboard’s main singles chart weren’t originally part of any original album.
Included are songs that became incredibly well-known (“Instant Karma,” “Give Peace a Chance”), a seasonal favorite (“Happy Xmas”) and at least one Top 40 hit that’s now hardly heard at all: “Cold Turkey,” with its grinding groove and graphic depiction of addiction and withdrawal, won’t be appearing on your hometown classic-rock station anytime soon.
They completed a catalog that saw Lennon’s most notable chart successes – the No. 1 songs “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night” and “(Just Like) Starting Over” – emerge from larger album efforts on 1974’s Walls and Bridges and 1980’s Double Fantasy. By then, Lennon had already amassed more than a dozen of his own Top 40 songs, despite taking several years off in the late-’70s.
READ MORE: 20 Beatles Songs That John Lennon Hated
The best-known, even if it wasn’t Lennon’s biggest hit, remains the title track from 1971’s Imagine. He changed the words after the single’s release amid criticism that a millionaire was asking others to forsake worldly things. “I wonder if you can” became “I wonder if we can” during the One to One Concerts showcased on 2025’s Power to the People.
Those would be Lennon’s final complete concert performances. Double Fantasy, released just before he was murdered, went on to produce two more Top 40 hits during a period of intense mourning. The posthumous Milk and Honey spun off another one four years later. Then one more old favorite returned to the charts, almost four decades after his death.
Here’s a look back as we rank all 14 John Lennon Top 40 solo hits:
No. 14. “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”
Hot 100: #38
From: Shaved Fish (1975)
“Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” started as the theme of a quixotic anti-war billboard campaign during the Vietnam era, then become an unlikely modern holiday standard. Oddly enough, it failed to chart upon release before ultimately reaching the Top 40 in December 2018 amid renewed interest.
No. 13. “Stand By Me”
Hot 100: #20
Album: Rock ‘n’ Roll (1975)
Lennon loved this one, often returning to old Ben E. King hit during unfocused sessions jams – as heard during the recording of the Beatles’ Let It Be, among others. (He also played “Stand By Me” during his last public performance on 1975’s Salute To Lew Grade television show.) Lennon’s best pass, recorded with the same group from Walls and Bridges, became a final Top 40 single before his late-’70s hiatus. Lennon’s deeply impassioned vocal is matched by Jesse Ed Davis’ stirring turn on the guitar.
No. 12. “Whatever Gets You thru the Night”
Hot 100: #1
From: Walls and Bridges (1974)
At this point, Lennon’s flinty solo career hadn’t yet produced a No. 1 single. He broke the spell with a song inspired by a cribbed phrase from TV – this time after channel surfing into a late-night evangelist. Lennon’s friend Elton John was so confident the song would hit that he made a now-famous bet that led Lennon to an historic concert performance.
No. 11. “Give Peace a Chance”
Hot 100: #14
Album: Shaved Fish (1975)
Lennon subsequently made an ill-advised detour into more stringent politics, brushing aside the easy brilliance of more suggestive songs like this one. (“It wasn’t like ‘You have to have peace!'” he later told David Scheff. “Just give it a chance.”) He was joined by a cast of dozens on the second-to-last day of his 1969 bed-in for peace in Montreal.
No. 10. “Cold Turkey”
Hot 100: #30
From: Shaved Fish (1975)
Lennon descended into heroin addiction during the White Album era, only clawing his way back after the Beatles were thudding to a halt. His harrowing journey is depicted on this second solo single.
No. 9. “Mind Games”
Hot 100: #18
From: Mind Games (1973)
What if “I Am the Walrus” had an anti-war thread running through it? You’d have the title track from Mind Games, as Lennon tosses off Lewis Carroll-ish references to “druid dudes” and “mind guerillas” while railing against the ongoing conflict in Vietnam. Lennon’s careful balance of fantasy and message likely helped this single into the Top 40.
No. 8. “Nobody Told Me”
Hot 100: #5
From: Milk and Honey (1984)
Nostalgia had everything to do with this song’s posthumous Top 20 finish, and not just because fans missed the late Lennon. His familiar call-and-response approach (“there’s always something happening, but nothing going on … everybody’s smoking but no one’s getting high“) drew a straight line back to the wordplay whimsy of Lennon’s late-Beatles period.
No. 7. “Imagine”
Hot 100: #3
From: Imagine (1971)
Lennon himself actually nailed it: This song is “anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic – but because it is sugarcoated, it is accepted.”
No. 6. “Power to the People”
Hot 100: #11
From: Shaved Fish (1975)
“Power to the People” provided a preview of the more political bent heard on 1972’s Some Time in New York City – but with an approach that was similar to his contemporary demo of “Bring on the Lucie (Freda Peeple).” These weren’t determinedly newsy songs, and they boasted huge, hooky choruses that leveraged universal themes. Unfortunately, the theme of “Power to the People” was already a bit passe, even though Alan White’s doggedly aggressive rhythm moves everything along. Lennon later acknowledged that the song probably arrived about a decade too late.
No. 5. “Woman”
Hot 100: #2
From: Double Fantasy (1980)
Lennon so rarely returned to core approaches from the Beatles era that it gave new gravitas to rare nostalgic returns like 1974’s unabashedly psychedelic “#9 Dream.” But no Lennon solo song ever had the throwback pop smarts of “Woman,” Lennon’s first posthumously released single. He knew it, too. While recording his vocals, Lennon mused: “I feel like I’m still in the f—ing Beatles with this track.”
No. 4. “Watching the Wheels”
Hot 100: #10
From: Double Fantasy (1980)
Lennon was clearly still attempting to come to terms with things as they were – with middle age, with a settled life, with love and work and parenthood. How long could it have been before he was ready to push back, and hard? Unfortunately, we never got to hear his next great rock record.
No. 3. “(Just Like) Starting Over”
Hot 100: #1
From: Double Fantasy (1980)
Lennon hadn’t sounded this openhearted since the early days with the Beatles, neither musically (there’s a welcome nod to the music of his youth) nor lyrically (as he looks unabashedly forward). That sense of renewal, when taken in context, can begin to feel like a huge letdown. Don’t let it. This is joy, sheer joy.
No. 2. “#9 Dream”
Hot 100: #9
From: Walls and Bridges (1974)
Lennon never sounded more like his creative apex with the Beatles in 1967 than he did here. But that certainly wasn’t the intention. In fact, the original demo – simply titled “So Long” – was based on a contemporary string arrangement he’d written for Harry Nilsson’s cover of “Many Rivers to Cross” from Nilsson’s 1974 LP Pussy Cats. Still, the narcoleptic mysticism of “#9 Dream” – Lennon said “ah bowakawa pousse, pousse” actually came to him in a dream – would have fit right in on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Magical Mystery Tour – and that’s no small thing.
No. 1. “Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)”
Hot 100: #3
From: Shaved Fish (1975)
Lennon felt certain that he had a hit as soon as this song was completed, so much so that (in keeping with its theme) he was determined to rush “Instant Karma!” out to the general public. The song was written, recorded and released over a period of just 10 days. Lennon would subsequently boast, in only a slight exaggeration, that he “wrote it for breakfast, recorded it for lunch and we’re putting it out for dinner.” Despite that short timeline, it somehow became timeless: “Instant Karma!” was the first Beatles solo song to sell 1 million copies in the U.S.
Beatles Solo Albums Ranked
Included are albums that still feel like time-stamped baubles and others that have only grown in estimation.
Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
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