Lead singer Dolores O'Riordan explained: "I was reading a book about John Lennon's life. I could relate to the fact that when you're a famous person everybody wants to tell you what you should do and who you should be with. Everybody judges you all of the time. I always thought that people judged his relationship with Yoko a little too much, that obviously the man was in love with the woman, and [people] should have left him alone."
For the gunshots at the end of the song, they tried to guess how many times Lennon was shot, and came up with five.
The song's title comes from Mark Chapman after he killed the former Beatle. On being asked, "Do you know what you've done?" Chapman replied, "I just shot John Lennon."
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