John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English rock musician, singer-songwriter, author, and peace activist who gained worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles. With Paul McCartney, Lennon formed one of the most influential and successful songwriting partnerships of the 20th century and "wrote some of the most popular music in rock and roll history". Billboard ranks him as the second most successful songwriter in singles chart history after McCartney.
Lennon revealed a rebellious nature and an acerbic wit in his music, his writing, on film and at press conferences and interviews. He was controversial through his work as a peace activist and visual artist, along with his wife Yoko Ono. After The Beatles broke up in 1970, Lennon enjoyed a successful and critically acclaimed solo career, selling 14 million albums in the US alone, with albums such as John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine and iconic songs such as "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine".
After a self-imposed "retirement" in 1975 to raise his son Sean, Lennon reemerged in 1980 with a comeback album, Double Fantasy, but was murdered less than one month after its release. The album won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year and is Lennon's best-selling studio album at three million shipments in the US.
In 2002, respondents to a BBC poll on the 100 Greatest Britons voted Lennon eighth. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Lennon #38 on its list of "The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time" (The Beatles were ranked number one). He was also ranked fifth greatest singer of all time by Rolling Stone in 2008. He was posthumously inducted into both the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
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