John Lennon’s fourth solo album, Mind Games, will be reissued and expanded this summer.
Arriving July 12 via Lennon’s estate and Capitol/UMe, Mind Games – The Ultimate Collection features the recording sessions from Record Plant in New York City, where you can immerse yourself in-studio commentary, unreleased outtakes, mixes, and much more.
Like the previous Ultimate Collection releases (Imagine, Gimme Some Truth, and John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band), Mind Games boasts six different mixes to experience: Ultimate Mixes, Elemental Mixes, Elements Mixes, Out-takes, Raw Studio Mixes, and Evolution Documentary. You can hear a preview of the latter below, where Lennon starts chatting about his process a minute into the title track.
Overseen by Yoko Ono and Sean Ono Lennon, Mind Games will be released in a Super Deluxe Edition — presented in a 13-inch cube — and a Standard Deluxe Edition. The news arrives just after the estate’s partnership with the app Lumenate, which allows you to meditate to the title track via nine different mixes.
In 2020, Ono Lennon told us that “Mind Games” is his favorite of his dad’s (in addition to “#9 Dream”) in terms of his musical compositions. “Mind Games is such a good album, and it’s such a good song,” he said. “It’s interesting because it’s almost like my dad is getting more pop again. There’s something in ‘Mind Games’ that’s more Beatle-esque, I think, than anything he had done so far in the solo work. It has this kind of descending Bach bass line, but it doesn’t sound like the Beatles either. To me, it’s a remarkable song. It’s like his songwriting is still evolving …. I think it’s a jewel in the whole John Lennon solo career.”
