Season of Glass (album)

The album was released less than six months after Lennon's death and deals with it directly in songs such as "Goodbye Sadness" and "I Don't Know Why". Lennon and Ono's son Sean Lennon features on "Even When You're Far Away", recounting a story his father used to tell him.

The front cover depicts the glasses John Lennon was wearing on the day of his murder next to a half-filled glass of water, against a backdrop of Central Park. The choice of album cover was considered controversial by the record company:

I used a photo I took of John's blood-stained glasses on the record cover. The record company called me and said the record shops would not stock the record unless I changed the cover. I didn't understand it. Why? They said it was in bad taste. I felt like a person soaked in blood coming into a living room full of people and reporting that my husband was dead, his body was taken away, and the pair of glasses were the only thing I had managed to salvage – and people looking at me saying it was in bad taste to show the glasses to them. "I'm not changing the cover. This is what John is now," I said.

More information Review scores, Source ...

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[3]
Robert Christgau	A−[4]
Pitchfork	7.7/10 (1999)[5] 8.8/10 (2023)[6]
Rolling Stone	[7]

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Season of Glass charted at number 49 on the Billboard 200, making it Ono's highest-charting solo album to date.^[8] The songs "Mindweaver" and "Goodbye Sadness" received medium airplay on the Santa Rosa station KHTH soon after the album's release.^[9]

Billboard magazine gave the album a positive review, describing the album as Ono's "reaffirmation in life", containing a sense that she will "brave the crisis".^[10] Billboard also described the album as having "a minimum of quirks" and sounded more commercial than any of her previous albums.^[10] The songs "I Don't Know Why", "Goodbye Sadness", "Turn of the Wheel" and "She Gets Down on Her Knees" were chosen as the best cuts from the album.^[10]

UK trade magazine Record Business noted that Season of Glass confirmed reviewers' first impressions of Double Fantasy that Ono was "writing and performing outstanding material". Record Business noted how "strident, assured and confident" Yoko's voice had become, as well as the "excellent" musicianship shown on the album, with "tasteful saxophone breaks" and "echoes of Morricone".^[11]

Music journalist Robert Christgau stated that "damn near every song [on the album] is affecting".^[4] He described the transition from the "retrospective irony" of "Extension 33" to the "cut-off vulnerability" of "No, No, No" as "positively gut-wrenching".^[4]

In a review for the 1997 reissue, Ryan Schreiber of Pitchfork called the album "a landmark in musical history" that "[encapsulated] Yoko's sadness" as well as the sadness felt around the world by John Lennon's death.^[5] He added that the album showcased Ono's "remarkable strength" and described the bonus demo recording of "I Don't Know Why" on the reissue as "harrowing".^[5]

Pitchfork reviewed the album a second time in 2023, giving it a higher score of 8.8 compared to the website's original 7.7 score in their 1997 review.^[6] Jayson Greene described the album as a "survivor's statement" and the song "I Don't Know Why" as "harrowing and plainspoken" and "Goodbye Sadness" as "heart-rending".^[6] He noted that the songs "Goodbye Sadness", "Toyboat", "Silver Horse" and "Mother of the Universe" featured Ono singing "gorgeous, long-breathed melodies [...] while the music gently rocks and sways".^[6] Greene stated that the songs on Season of Glass were "lullabies to hope, delivered with the beatific calm of a dying opera heroine's final aria".^[6] He did however feel that the omission of "Walking on Thin Ice" was "like a glitch in the historical record" and should have had a place on the album.^[6]

Pitchfork listed Season of Glass as one of the best 200 albums of the 1980s.^[12]

Three songs from this recording were reworked by other artists on the remix tribute album Yes, I'm a Witch in 2007. Anohni reworked "Toyboat", The Apples in Stereo reworked "Nobody Sees Me Like You Do" and Jason Pierce from Spiritualized reworked "Walking on Thin Ice".^{[citation needed]}

Holly Miranda covered "Nobody Sees Me Like You Do" as a B-side to her single "Forest Green, Oh Forest Green" and on her EP Choose to See, which was included with the purchase of her 2010 album The Magician's Private Library.^[16]

• Yoko Ono – vocals, cover photography, design
• John Lennon – guitar, keyboards
• Sean Ono Lennon – "A little story"
• Hugh McCracken – guitar, Jew's harp on "Dogtown"
• Earl Slick – guitar
• George Small – keyboards
• Tony Levin – bass guitar
• John Siegler – bass guitar on "Mindweaver" and "Mother of the Universe"
• Andy Newmark – drums
• Arthur Jenkins Jr. – percussion
• David Friedman – percussion, vibraphone
• George "Young" Opalisky – soprano and alto saxophone
• Michael Brecker – tenor saxophone
• Ronnie Cuber – baritone saxophone
• Howard Johnson – tuba
• Tony Davilio – conductor, keyboards; guitar on "No, No, No" and "Toyboat"

Technical

• Frederic Seaman, Jerry Caron – production assistant
• Ed Sprigg – engineer
• Christopher Whorf – artwork