Milk and Honey is the sixth and final album by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, released in 1984. Following the compilation The John Lennon Collection, it is Lennon's eighth and final studio album, and the first release of new Lennon music, having been recorded in the last months of his life during and following the sessions for his 1980 album Double Fantasy. It was assembled by Yoko Ono in association with the Geffen label.
Background
Milk and Honey was the duo's projected follow-up to Double Fantasy, though Lennon's death caused a temporary shelving of the project. It took Ono three years to be able to resume work to complete it. Ono's material largely comprises new recordings which she undertook during the album's preparation in 1983, which give her songs a more commercial and contemporary edge. Conversely, Lennon's material, being rough takes and rehearsal recordings, has a more casual feeling.
Music and lyrics
"Nobody Told Me", a song Lennon intended for Ringo Starr's 1981 album Stop and Smell the Roses, was released as a single and became a worldwide Top 10 hit. Other singles from the album were "I'm Stepping Out" and "Borrowed Time". The songs "Let Me Count the Ways" and "Grow Old with Me" were written by Lennon and Ono to each other using inspiration from poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. They are presented in their demo form.
Title
The album title came from Ono, who explained that it referred to their journey to the US, "the land of milk and honey". "But also, in the Scripture, the land of milk and honey is where you go after you die, as a promised land", Ono went on to say. "So it's very strange that I thought of that title. Almost scary – like someone up there told me to call the next album Milk and Honey." The cover is an alternative take from the same photo session that produced the front cover of Double Fantasy, though this time it appears in colour.
Release
After falling out with David Geffen, whose Geffen Records had initially released Double Fantasy, Ono moved future projects to Polydor Records, which initially released Milk and Honey. EMI, home of Lennon's entire recorded output—including that with the Beatles—acquired this and all Lennon releases in the late 1990s. Predictably, the reaction to Milk and Honey was less fanatical than the one that afforded Double Fantasy in the wake of Lennon's death, but it was still well received, peaking at No. 3 in the UK and No. 11 in the US, where it went gold. Jack Douglas, who had co-produced Double Fantasy with Lennon and Ono, also had input into the initial sessions for Milk and Honey, though Ono declined to credit him after their professional relationship soured following Lennon's death.
Aftermath
In 2001, Ono supervised the remastering of Milk and Honey for its CD reissue, adding three bonus tracks and a 22-minute excerpt from Lennon's last interview in the late afternoon of 8 December 1980, hours before his death. The bonus tracks include home demo recordings of "I'm Stepping Out" and "I'm Moving On" along with a version of "Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him" featuring Lennon's vocals only, which was planned to be included on the Ono tribute albumEvery Man Has a Woman.
Track listing
Side one
"I'm Stepping Out" – 4:06
"Sleepless Night" – 2:34
"I Don't Wanna Face It" – 3:22
"Don't Be Scared" – 2:45
"Nobody Told Me" – 3:34
"O' Sanity" – 1:05
Side two
"Borrowed Time" – 4:29
"Your Hands" – 3:04
" My Little Flower Princess" – 2:28
"Let Me Count the Ways" – 2:17
"Grow Old with Me" – 3:07
"You’re the One" – 3:56
Personnel
John Lennon – guitar, keyboards, vocals, piano on "Grow Old with Me"
Yoko Ono – vocals, piano on "Let Me Count the Ways"
