Double Fantasy

It was released on Geffen on 17 November 1980. Lennon's first new record in five years, it alternated his songs with Ono's as a musical dialogue between husband and wife, and carried the subtitle A Heart Play. The title came from a species of freesia the couple saw in the Bermuda Botanical Gardens. Lennon had written the songs largely after a sailing trip to Bermuda in June 1980.

Ono approached the producer Jack Douglas, and Lennon had Douglas assemble and rehearse a band without telling the players who they would be recording with. Sessions ran at the Hit Factory in New York from 7 August to 19 October 1980. Douglas said the sessions were kept secret because Lennon was not confident in his work. The couple signed with the new Geffen label on 22 September 1980. The lead single "(Just Like) Starting Over" came out on 20 October, followed by "Woman" and "Watching the Wheels".

Initial reviews were largely negative. Robert Christgau nonetheless ranked it seventh on his own list of the year's best albums, and in a later review Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote of "a sweet acceptance of middle age". The album topped the US Billboard chart for eight weeks and spent two weeks at number one in Britain. At the 1982 Grammy Awards it won Album of the Year for 1981. Ono and Douglas released a remix, Double Fantasy Stripped Down, in 2010.