Nobody Told Me

1984 posthumous single by John Lennon
the album by John Mayall

"Nobody Told Me" is a song by John Lennon. The B side features Yoko Ono's "O' Sanity"; both are on the Milk and Honey album. The promo video for the single was made up of clips of footage from Lennon's other videos, as are most posthumous Lennon videos.

The lyrics reference the yellow idol in J. Milton Hayes' poem The Green Eye of the Yellow God. The first stanza of the poem runs: "There's a one eyed yellow idol to the north of Kathmandu. "Also notice that the radio programme The Goon Show (1951 1960), a Lennon's favourite, has an episode where the characters joke around the phrase: "There's a little yellow idol to the north of Kathmandu" using the adjective "little" as the song lyrics.|group="note"

Another line in the song is "There's UFOs over New York and I ain't too surprised". The lines "Nobody told me there'd be days like these / Strange days indeed / Most peculiar, mama" are in contrast to the old adage "My mother told me there'd be days like this" (as in The Shirelles' song "Mama Said"). Yoko Ono called the track "kind of a fun song." She told Uncut in 1998: "I think that especially around that time he felt that again, the world had lost its course, its direction. I really think that it's to do with, not confusion but starting to learn that life is always gonna be a mystery."

Recorded but left incomplete shortly before his death in 1980, the song was later completed by Lennon's widow Yoko Ono in 1983 and released as the first single from Lennon and Ono's album Milk and Honey in 1984. The song was later re released in the UK in 1990 with "I'm Stepping Out" on the B side. The song was originally written for Ringo Starr to include on his 1981 album, Stop and Smell the Roses, but due to Lennon's death, Starr decided not to record it.

"Nobody Told Me" was Lennon's last new single to reach the UK top 10, peaking at number 6 in January 1984 (although a reissue of "Imagine" reached number 3 in December 1999). The single was also Lennon's last US top 10 hit, peaking at number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 6 on the Cashbox Top 100, and was his third single to enter the US top 10 posthumously.

The Flaming Lips recorded a version for the 1995 John Lennon tribute album Working Class Hero: A Tribute to John Lennon. The 2007 benefit album Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur contained a version by Big & Rich.