It's Alright (I See Rainbows)

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."^[2]

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.

In 1997, the album was remastered by Ono and Rob Stevens for release on CD by Rykodisc.^[3] 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.

The album is due to be re-issued by Secretly Canadian on 18 September 2026 on CD, black vinyl LP, white vinyl LP and also digital download and streaming for the first time. CD and digital releases will have two bonus tracks, "Forgive Me, My Love" (originally released on 1992's Onobox) and a previously unreleased live performance of "Dream Love" recorded in Budapest.^[4]

More information Review scores, Source ...

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[5]
Rolling Stone	[2]

Close

Billboard called it Ono's "most commercially accessible musical effort."^[6] 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."^[2]

Record Business called It's Alright "an engagingly intriguing album", and noted Yoko's "very personal message of lost love and coming to terms with a new existence" which makes for "a strong emotional statement". Also noted was the "imaginative production" that manages to "[weld] together the parts and [give] the album an overall dimension that is never less than impressive".^[7]

All songs written by Yoko Ono.

• 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