John Lennon, Love (Meditation Mixes) | Review — State of Sound

NEW RELEASE

John Lennon Love (Meditation Mixes)

Occupying the ever-growing music/mental health space, these beautiful reimaginings succeed on their own terms. John Lennon would have approved.

7.2

by David Rea

18 April 2026

Release date: 18 April 2026

Label: UMR/Calderstone

FOR YEARS NOW the mental health industry has been appropriating music, remixing it with samples of birdsong or whale calls, packaging it in images of sun-dappled forests or glittering seascapes, then selling it back to us with catchy titles like ‘Meditate to the Music of Nature’. But music has been benefiting our mental health ever since Homo erectus first grunted a lullaby to a newborn (or however human music originated). We've always intuited songs can nourish our souls. Long before mental health was even a term, we have turned to music to hold our hands through grief; it’s why veterans from the Second World War still get a frog in their throats when they hear Vera Lynn sing ‘We’ll Meet Again’, and why teenagers pogoed around their bedrooms to punk and now weep when they watch Taylor Swift perform live.

John Lennon Love (Meditation Mixes), however, is not a cynical cash grab, but a thoughtfully conceived and sensitively rendered reimagining of one of John Lennon's most affecting songs. No doubt the man himself would have approved. Ever since he penned ‘You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away’, he used songwriting to excavate his heart or expunge his demons. ‘Help’ was, of course, well, a cry for help, and John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band was primal scream therapy made music. But John Lennon would have also endorsed the idea because he liked to be where it was at, and this is where music is. This release is, if not exactly pioneering, then it is at least at the forefront of the evolving synergy between the music and mental health industries.

“Does it succeed on its own terms? Absolutely. These ambient reimaginings furnish a beautiful, serene and unobtrusive mental space.”

The release centres around nine Meditation Mixes of John Lennon’s song ‘Love’, produced by Sean Ono Lennon. According to the official John Lennon website, ‘various sound design techniques and processes have been applied to the original 1970 one-inch multitrack recordings, and in some cases have been enhanced with additional instrumentation from Sean Ono Lennon’. A fair degree of neuroscience has also been applied too: ‘Four of the tracks are presented as Binaural Beat versions that each focus on different types of brain waves’. These also feature ‘an auditory illusion created within the brain when the left and right ears hear two slightly different frequencies whose difference is perceived as a new frequency which can activate different brain patterns for scientifically proven therapeutic effects’. The packaging resembles a glossy lifestyle product-cum-objet d’art. With its ‘Pearl Arctic’ vinyl housed in a triple gatefold ‘mirrorboard’ sleeve, it is something you might expect to find in a shop selling luxury beauty products. The release is also available through the consciousness-expanding app Lumenate.

Does it succeed on its own terms? Absolutely. Sean Ono Lennon has reworked the song with great sensitivity. Its ambient reimaginings furnish a beautiful, serene and unobtrusive mental space. It is moving, too, to listen to a son’s interpretations of a father’s music, especially when the father had well-documented mental health struggles, and Sean Ono Lennon has spoken so eloquently about the particular wound of losing a father so young. But does it need John Lennon’s ‘Love’ to succeed? Well that's the sticking point. And I'd argue it does. More than 40 years after his assassination, John Lennon still evokes a unique blend of connotations: flowers and placards, media circus bed-ins, timeless and remarkably original music, radical protest and emotional struggle. But maybe more than anything else, he allowed himself to be emotionally vulnerable at a time when it was not quite the done thing. And that is what this music invites you to be. Even when the remixes render the original melody unrecognisable, and the lyrics almost vanish, these mixes still create a unique emotional ecosystem, made out of John Lennon-ness.