Late-’80s Indie-pioneers Galaxie 500 had a penchant for covering only the most off-beat of Beatles and Beatles-adjacent tracks: the “Paperback Writer” B-side “Rain,” George Harrison’s Revolver reject “Isn’t It a Pity,” parody-band The Ruttles’ “Cheese and Onions,” etc. Even with the most famous Rock band of all time, Galaxie 500 still had a knack for sniffing out the most underappreciated corners of their oeuvre. They were still working in that tongue-in-cheek tradition when they took Yoko Ono’s “Listen, The Snow Is Falling”–the little-loved B-side to John Lennon‘s annually overplayed “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)“–and expanded it into an epic, near-8-minute, reverb-heavy jam-session on their third and final album This Is Our Music. It is one of the very few tracks where bassist Naomi Yang sings lead (at least until Damon & Naomi arose from the ashes), and is a highlight of the band’s all-too-brief career.

There was a certain generosity to Galaxie 500’s reclamation of the song, because it’s always been a little too easy to hate on Yoko, hasn’t it. First-generation Beatles fans made her an easy scape-goat for the band’s break-up, as though their massive egos hadn’t made their break-up inevitable regardless. It was also easy to blame her for the dissolution of Lennon’s first marriage, as though he wasn’t an abusive husband and father to Cynthia who was better off without him anyways, or as though he didn’t cheat on Yoko just as often (and did frequently leave him as a result).

Latter-day Beatles fans in turn have made merry of the one time Yoko made dolphin sounds on live TV while John Lennon was dueting with Chuck Berry, which incident they use as a way to rationalize and justify their hatred, but what of that? Sure, that moment was weird and off-putting, but still completely out of proportion with the sheer, staggering levels of misogynistic hatred she has received for literal decades–not to mention racist; the blonde Linda McCartney also sang on some of her husband’s songs, and never got anywhere near this same level of hatred.

In short, Yoko Ono has been one of the hated and despised ones of Beatles lore; such perhaps is exactly why Galaxie 500 chose to cover her.

We had discussed earlier with Tom Waits how the Savior of the World has an obvious sympathy and preference for the cast-offs and despised of society; as does Galaxie 500; as should we. Remember that the moral of the Parable of the Good Samaritan is that the people we may think justifiably deserve our contempt the most (the Samaritans were not just considered a false religion by the Jews, but apostates and traitors), are the ones we should most consider our neighbors. Yoko Ono has been among the despised of society; the Christmas season then is a good time to appreciate her one Christmas song, which is in turn a good reminder to love the least of these among us all year round just in general, like Galaxie 500 did a quarter century ago and counting.