h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: 'Happy Xmas (War Is Over)' - the Song - A88039713
Author: Bluebottle - U43530

Christmas! Desire for Peace! Controversial Lyrics! Famous Folk Racehorse! Beatles! Lawsuits! Excessive Exclamation Marks!

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Excellent - thank you

I'm not sure I quite follow the dispute with Lord Lew Grade. The labelling of the song as by John and Yoko triggered the legal dispute?

"And so this is for Christmas" - should that be "And so this is Christmas"? Could you give a couple of examples of beloved Christmas songs? Interesting that that verse isn't skipped eg in Celine Dion's version, but perhaps because it is not obviously obvious what 'ones' means...

Was it a music magazine that held the vote in 2012?

Fascinating that even the official album lyrics contained Mondegreens

Thanks for the read-through - yep, I was writing 'for' after every other word and got carried away there

I've re-written the Lew Grade dispute to make it hopefully clearer (while being a huge simplification of the shares situation which only really requires an essential summary). While the figures I'm making up now are arbitrary, the point is that if John Lennon had been credited solely, Grade might have received, say, £100,000 but Yoko being joint-credited meant he only got £50,000 (or whatever the actual payment figures are - the issue was it halved his profit instantly, leading to him suing).

It was ITV that held the vote in 2012, but I've since found 'Rolling Stone' magazine held a similar poll in 2011 which 'Happy Xmas (War Is Over)' won. Apart from both having 'Fairytale of New York' in the top 3 there was very little overlap between the two polls...

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Thank you

The timeline for the dispute is much clearer now - a helpful summary

Excellent results to end the Entry with

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