Songs that John Lennon worked on after a stormy sailing voyage to Bermuda in 1980 and during his subsequent two-month stay on the island have been rated among the best of his solo career on a major entertainment news website.

In an article on Collider, a site that attracts nearly 30 million visits each month, the Bermudian-inspired Double Fantasy album by Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, has been ranked top of the seven he released during his lifetime following the break-up of the Beatles.

The analysis piece shows a younger generation engaging with the work of Lennon and appreciating his final songs more than his celebrated earlier albums, such as Imagine.

Val Barone, who wrote the article, is a Gen Z music journalist born more than 20 years after Lennon was assassinated.

“I heard Lennon's discography when he was sadly no longer with us,” she told The Royal Gazette. “Double Fantasy has been a favourite of mine for years, and I always found fascinating how he emerged from his hiatus an incredible balladist. It's also so different from his previous work, in terms of the content.

“He sounds so unabashedly optimistic, so unlike his hardened rock star persona, and perhaps it’s because I only got to hear it after the tragedy [of his death], but it’s hard not to imagine where his career would have gone had he been allowed to continue on this direction.”

Her article has attracted commentary elsewhere, including by Madz Dizon on Yahoo.com, who recounts the story of Lennon sailing to Bermuda and being at the helm of the 43ft sloop Megan Jaye during a fierce storm, and taking inspiration from the island in June and July 1980, having spent the previous five years away from the music industry helping raise his son Sean.

The musician is known to have visited the Botanical Gardens, Spanish Point, St Peter's Church in St George's and to have spent an evening at the Disco 40 nightclub on Front Street.

He rented “Undercliff” in Fairylands, Pembroke, where he worked on songs that appeared on Double Fantasy, recording demos on a tape recorder he bought at Stuart’s, an electronics store on Reid Street.

Double Fantasy, which features Bermudian drummer Andy Newmark, was released in November 1980 and takes its name from a freesia that once grew in the Botanical Gardens.

In her article, Ms Barone says she was particularly struck by Lennon's ballads. She said it “consolidates him as a top-notch balladist. It opens with a beautiful, hopeful track titled (Just Like) Starting Over, which only sounds more heartbreaking [as] time passes”.

Lennon was shot and killed outside his apartment in New York in December 1980. A memorial sculpture created by Bermudian artist Graham Foster to commemorate Lennon's connection with Bermuda was unveiled in the Botanical Gardens in 2012.