It's Alright (I See Rainbows)

Template:Italic title It's Alright (I See Rainbows) is the sixth solo album by Yoko Ono, and her second release after the murder of husband John Lennon. As a variation of a theme concerning its predecessor, the back cover features a transparent image of Lennon in a then-contemporary photo of Yoko and Sean, depicted in Central Park. Released in 1982, all songs were written, composed, arranged, produced, and sung by Ono. It charted at #98 in the US.

Background

The album saw Yoko take her music in a more uplifting direction following 1981's Season of Glass, despite the "bulk" of the album's songs "deal[ing] with her unabated feelings of loss over Lennon."

Yoko reflected on the making of the album when writing liner notes for the 1992 boxset Onobox:

The songs from It’s Alright were an attempt to do new sounds. I used shotguns for the backbeat. I brought Sean’s toy raygun to the studio to use it as a rhythm track. I was expecting the usual sneer I had gotten from the musicians and engineers whenever I had tried to do anything that was out of the ordinary. Surprisingly, no one was upset this time. It was ’82 and it seemed as though I was finally in sync with the world.

[...]

In a way, the It's Alright time was much more difficult for me as a woman, as a person, than when I had made Season Of Glass. Life went on. I had to walk and talk normally, while I knew that somewhere inside me there was a clock that had stopped in ’80.

— Template:Comma separated entries

In 1997, the album was remastered by Ono and Rob Stevens for release on CD by Rykodisc. The 1997 release used newly remixed versions of all songs. Some of the original mixes had a CD release in 1992 on the Onobox set but the rest remain unreleased on CD to date.

Reception

Template:Music ratings Billboard called it Ono's "most commercially accessible musical effort." Writing for Rolling Stone, Kurt Loder noted its "committed and convincing avant-gardism", which produced a "synthesizer-based pop that’s more adventurous than much of the music currently being ground out by Europersons half her age."

Track listing

All songs written by Yoko Ono.

Personnel

• Yoko Ono – vocals
• Paul Griffin – keyboards, synthesizer, piano
• Pete Cannarozzi – synthesizer
• Gordon Grody, Kurt Yahjihan, Carlos Alomar – background vocals
• Elliott Randall, Steve Love, Hugh McCracken, John Lennon, John Tropea – guitar
• Michael Holmes, Paul Shaffer – keyboards
• Neil Jason, Tony Levin, Wayne Pedziwiatr – bass guitar
• Yogi Horton, Allan Schwartzberg – drums
• Rubens Bassini, David A. Freedman, Sammy Figueroa, Roger Squitero – percussion
• Badal Roy – tabla
• Howard Johnson – baritone saxophone, tuba

Technical

• Brian McGee, John Davenport, Jon Smith – engineer
• Bob Gruen – photography

Charts

Chart (1982–83)	Peak position	Total weeks
U.S. Billboard 200	98	13

Release history

Country	Date	Format	Label	Catalog
United States	2 November 1982	LP	Polydor	PD1-6364
		Cassette		CT-1-6364
United Kingdom	16 December 1982	LP		POLD 5073
		Cassette		POLDC 5073
Germany	1982	LP		2391559
Australia
Japan	January 1983			28MM 0241
United States	1 July 1997	CD	Rykodisc	RCD 10422
United Kingdom	26 August 1997
Japan	1997