It's an adage as old as time, not to mix business with pleasure. But if you ask performance artist Yoko Ono, that's not what happened when she agreed to co-produce her latest album with her son, Sean Lennon. "Not exactly mixing business with pleasure. Having a son is not all pleasure," she jokes.

Ono says Lennon was the one who initially encouraged her to record Between My Head and the Sky, so when he proposed that she record it with Chimera, his record label, she agreed. "Afterward, people told me, 'You shouldn't be doing it with your son; that's the last thing you want to do,'" she says. "I said, 'Oooh well, I already said okay.' I was a bit scared, but then, the thing is, it went very well."

In fact, to hear the pride in Ono's voice as she raves about her son's work is a reminder that, whether you're the widow of a beloved music legend or a mom-next-door, there's perhaps nothing as universal as a mother's love. "He's a good pianist and a talented guy, so I didn't want his piano to get buried in the big sound of everybody else," she says. "There's one track we did with only the piano and me called 'Higa Noburu,' which means 'The sun is rising,' and he didn't have to do it over again at all. It's a long song, and he just kept playing and didn't make any mistakes, not even a beat. He's incredible."

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