John Lennon - Working Class Hero Meaning

Song Released: 1970

Working Class Hero Lyrics

As soon as your born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
They hurt you at home...

1. anonymous

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   Jul 9th 2023 !⃝

   I loved John Lennon and the Beatles. Since 1964. I walked out of my first year Torts Class in Law School when the professor started the class by saying, “ok, so John Lennon’s dead … get over it.” I heard Howard Cosell’s announcement to the world during the end of the MNF game. That said, Lennon was not working class. Not like the rest. He was attending Art School. Quite posh for a working class lad. He wasn’t impoverished like Starkey or moved from one row house to another like McCartney. It’s a good song. But it’s not about him.
2. anonymous

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   Jun 6th 2020 !⃝

   I always found the last line somewhat troubling. "If you want to be a hero just follow me" sounds like something a demagogue might might tell him followers.
3. anonymous

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   Apr 17th 2020 !⃝

   "If you want to be a 'hero' (go on a fools errand in life) just follow 'me' (instead just be who you truly are). "And the world will live at peace." Unfortunately man does not know who he truly is. Man is so often just a mistaken pretender to the throne of life. My Call H.
4. blake

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   Dec 22nd 2016 !⃝

   this song is about the worthless utopian ideal that everyone should go to college and be a professional and pursue a "career" instead of a job. "As soon as your born they make you feel small". Teaching this garbage to children in school makes them despise their working class background and aspire the be something they are not. Lennon is telling everyone that being a member of the working class is admirable and honest thing and that we should not be swayed by these people who say otherwise. In fact the establishment elitists jerks that preach this poison are just enslaving us all with their classless society nonsense. " You think your so clever, and classless and free but your still F&*cki@ peasants as far as I can see". "There's room at the top they are telling you still".
   
   He's saying it's just a trap....they will teach you despise yourself and then in the end your worse off than if you just embraced who you really are. "If you want to be a hero just follow me". I think Lennon never stopped identifying with his working class roots.
5. anonymous

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   May 21st 2013 !⃝

   Working classers bitch about the upper class being snobs, but really it's THEM who are the biggest snobs of all. Sneerers and jeerers, the fucking lot of them. Working classers can just fuck off with their prejudice.

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
6. anonymous

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   Mar 22nd 2012 !⃝

   to the working clas a hero is mainly someone who works till he drops dead.
   while the propaganda working class hero is a civil rights fighter, but the working clas dont like those cause masses never like those who lift theire heads above the rests or worse tell them to change theire lives.
   also they are told that by working hard and stop to care about others they can reach the top .
   they never stood a chance cause they were already broken after scool,but they hold onto it
   cause otherwise everthing in theire lives would've been in vain.
   and even if one makes it
   or starts with the golden spoon
   rich or poor
   in the end all "fucking peasants"
   nowadays the better to be seen in beeing chained to the mobile "forever and ever bound in service".
7. anonymous

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   Sep 7th 2011 !⃝

   It's about how the working class is repressed by "the folks on the hill". I guess it's easy for John to talk about the little tiny ickle problems of the working class while he's at his multi-million dollar mansion getting laid everyday and eating caviar on a dayli basis. If your going to be rich and famous at least don't be a hipocrit.
8. anonymous

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   Jan 22nd 2011 !⃝

   The working class hero was John. John was the hero in which the people idolized as a hero. Everything in this song *exept for one part that I'll cover in a minute* was about John.
   
   "There's room at the top they are telling you still,
   But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
   If you want to be like the folks on the hill"
   
   Yes, I know Chapman shot Lennon after this song was released, John didn't know of Chapman. But I think A LOT of that has to to do with people like Mark David. I think there is a coincidental irony in this, "But first you must learn how to smile as you kill"...Mark David Chapman was smiling with every bullet that came out of that gun.