The first Friday Cocktail Hour of 2026 is on message for the new year. We all hope that 2026 will be better than 2025. It couldn’t get much worse.

That last sentence was a quote from The Beatles song Getting Better. It was a Macca tune, but John Lennon contributed that line. Macca doesn’t do sardonic, Lennon often did.

John Lennon wrote (Just Like) Starting Over for his 1980 album, Double Fantasy. It was the last Lennon album released before he was murdered. RIP.

We begin with the songwriter: The OG mix is followed by a 2010 remix:

This week’s tune is BIG. Nobody did big better than Tom Jones.

The Flaming Lips recorded the Lennon classic for a benefit album.

Finally, a jazzy version from Kat Edmonson:

What would the Friday Cocktail Hour be without an instrumental version of the week’s tune? This time, the Stringspace String Quartet:

That’s it for this week. Let’s drink to the start of the new year. It’s what Ringo, George, John, and Paul would want. Never argue with them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.