Cee-Lo Green has refused to apologise to die-hard John Lennon fans after he altered the lyrics to the legendary Lennon song 'Imagine' in his New Year's Eve performance of the song in Times Square. Cee Lo changed the words "nothing to kill or die for / and no religion too" to "nothing to kill or die for / and all religion's true." The Twitter user geekysteven argued that by changing the words, Green had altered the very meaning of the song, stating "The whole point of that lyric is that religion causes harm. If 'all [sic] relgion's true' it would be a pretty bleak place."
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Cee Lo responded to the criticism with a Twitter post saying "Yo I meant no disrespect by changing the lyric guys! I was trying to say a world were u could believe what u wanted that's all." The tweet, was later deleted and replaced with "Happy new year everyone!!! Now playing: we just disagree [by] dave mason"; possibly an oblique reference to the disagreement between him and Lennon's fans. He went on to say that he was listening to THE BEATLES' 1966 song 'I'm Only Sleeping' this morning
Cee Lo Green's performance was part of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve on the NBC network. Other celebrities that took part in the broadcast included Justin Bieber, Ryan Seacrest and DIEGO TORRES.