“Ballad of John and Yoko” by The Beatles

"The Ballad of John and Yoko" is John Lennon turning his own headlines into a single: a stand-alone Beatles release from May 1969, issued on Apple with George Martin producing, that tells the story of the whirl of events around his March 1969 wedding to Yoko Ono. Lennon wrote it, though the label read Lennon–McCartney as always.

Its nods to Christ and crucifixion got it pulled by some American stations, and it still climbed to number 8 on the Hot 100. At home it became the band's 17th UK number one, the last one they would get for 54 years, until "Now and Then" came along in 2023. Never part of a proper studio album, it has lived on compilations instead: Hey Jude, 1967–1970, Past Masters and 1.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.