"Something" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1969 studio album Abbey Road. It was written by George Harrison, the band's lead guitarist. Together with his second contribution to Abbey Road, "Here Comes the Sun", it is widely viewed by music historians as having marked Harrison's ascendancy as a composer to the level of the Beatles' principal songwriters, John Lennon and Paul McCartney.; : "[Harrison] would finally achieve equal songwriting status alongside Lennon and McCartney with his two classic contributions to the final Beatles LP, Abbey Road"; : "[By 1968] Harrison began to produce songs that many considered equal to some of Lennon and McCartney's best compositions. This became even more evident on... Abbey Road, which contained two masterpieces by Harrison: 'Here Comes the Sun' and 'Something'."Unterberger, Richie. "The Beatles 'Here Comes the Sun'. AllMusic. Retrieved 22 May 2021: "After years of residing in the heavy shadow of the awesome Lennon–McCartney writing partnership, George Harrison obtained equal recognition for his songwriting on the Beatles' final album, Abbey Road, with both 'Something' and 'Here Comes the Sun'." Two weeks after the album's release, the song was issued on a double A-side single, coupled with "Come Together", making it the first Harrison composition to become a Beatles A-side. The pairing was also the first time in the United Kingdom that the Beatles issued a single containing tracks already available on an album. While the single's commercial performance was lessened by this, it topped the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States as well as charts in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and West Germany, and peaked at number 4 in the UK.
The track is generally considered a love song to Pattie Boyd, Harrison's first wife, although Harrison offered alternative sources of inspiration in later interviews. Owing to the difficulty he faced in getting more than two of his compositions onto each Beatles album, Harrison first offered the song to Joe Cocker. As recorded by the Beatles, the track features a guitar solo that several music critics identify among Harrison's finest playing. The song also drew praise from the other Beatles and their producer, George Martin, with Lennon stating that it was the best song on Abbey Road. The promotional film for the single combined footage of each of the Beatles with his respective wife, reflecting the estrangement in the band during the months preceding their break-up in April 1970. Harrison subsequently performed the song at his Concert for Bangladesh shows in 1971 and throughout the two tours he made as a solo artist.
"Something" received the Ivor Novello Award for the "Best Song Musically and Lyrically" of 1969. By the late 1970s, it had been covered by over 150 artists, making it the second-most covered Beatles composition after "Yesterday". Shirley Bassey had a top-five UK hit with her 1970 recording, and Frank Sinatra regularly performed the song, calling it "the greatest love song of the past 50 years." Other artists who have covered it include Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, James Brown, Smokey Robinson and Johnny Rodriguez. In 1999, Broadcast Music Incorporated named "Something" as the 17th-most performed song of the twentieth century, with 5 million performances. In 2000, Mojo ranked "Something" at number 14 in the magazine's list of "The 100 Greatest Songs of All Time"; it was ranked 110th on Rolling Stones 2021 list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". In 2002, a year after Harrison's death, McCartney and Eric Clapton performed it at the Concert for George tribute at London's Royal Albert Hall.
Background and inspiration
George Harrison began writing "Something" in September 1968, during a session for the Beatles' self-titled double album, also known as "the White Album".Mark Lewisohn, "Something Else", in Mojo Special Limited Edition, p. 118. In his autobiography, I, Me, Mine, he recalls working on the melody on a piano, at the same time as Paul McCartney recorded overdubs in a neighbouring studio at London's Abbey Road Studios. Harrison suspended work on the song, believing that with the tune having come to him so easily, it might have been a melody from another song. In I, Me, Mine, he wrote that the middle eight "took some time to sort out".
The opening lyric was taken from the title of "Something in the Way She Moves", a track by James Taylor, another Apple Records artist. While Harrison imagined the composition in the style of Ray Charles, his inspiration for "Something" was his wife, Pattie Boyd. Available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required). In her 2007 autobiography, Wonderful Today, Boyd recalls: "He told me, in a matter-of-fact way, that he had written it for me. I thought it was beautiful ..." Boyd discusses the song's popularity among other recording artists and concludes: "My favourite [version] was the one by George Harrison, which he played to me in the kitchen at Kinfauns."
Having begun to write love songs that were directed at both God and a woman, with his White Album track "Long, Long, Long", Harrison later cited alternative sources for his inspiration for "Something". In early 1969, according to author Joshua Greene, Harrison told his friends from the Hare Krishna Movement that the song was about the Hindu deity Krishna; in an interview with Rolling Stone in 1976, he said of his approach to writing love songs: "all love is part of a universal love. When you love a woman, it's the God in her that you see." By 1996, Harrison had denied writing "Something" for Boyd. That year, he told a music journalist that "everybody presumed I wrote it about Pattie" because of the promotional film accompanying the release of the Beatles' recording, which showed the couple together.
Composition In the version issued on the Beatles' 1969 album Abbey Road, which was the first release for the song, "Something" runs at a speed of around 66 beats per minute and is in common time throughout. It begins with a guitar figure, which functions as the song's chorus, since it is repeated before each of the verses and also closes the track. The melody is in the key of C major until the eight-measure-long bridge, or middle eight, which is in the key of A major. Harrison biographer Simon Leng identifies "harmonic interest ... [in] almost every line" of the song, as the melody follows a series of descending half-steps from the tonic over the verses, a structure that is then mirrored in the new key, through the middle eight. The melody returns to C major for the guitar solo, the third verse, and the outro.
Leng considers that, lyrically and musically, "Something" reflects "doubt and striving to attain an uncertain goal". Author Ian Inglis writes of the confident statements that Harrison makes throughout regarding his feelings for Boyd. Referring to lines in the song's verses, Inglis writes: "there is a clear and mutual confidence in the reciprocal nature of their love; he muses that [Boyd] 'attracts me like no other lover' and 'all I have to do is think of her,' but he is equally aware that she feels the same, that 'somewhere in her smile, she knows. Similarly, when Harrison sings in the middle eight that "You're asking me will my love grow / I don't know, I don't know", Inglis interprets the words as "not an indication of uncertainty, but a wry reflection that his love is already so complete that it may simply be impossible for it to become any greater". Richie Unterberger of AllMusic describes "Something" as "an unabashedly straightforward and sentimental love song" written at a time "when most of the Beatles' songs were dealing with non-romantic topics or presenting cryptic and allusive lyrics even when they were writing about love".
Pre–Abbey Road recording history The Beatles' Get Back/Let It Be rehearsals Harrison introduced "Something" at a Beatles session on 19 September 1968, when he played it to George Martin's stand-in as producer of The Beatles, Chris Thomas, while the latter was working out the harpsichord part for Harrison's track "Piggies". Despite Thomas's enthusiasm for the new composition, Harrison chose to focus on "Piggies". He told Thomas that he intended to offer "Something" to singer Jackie Lomax, whose debut album Harrison was producing for Apple Records. "Something" was not among the tracks released on Lomax's album, much of which was recorded in Los Angeles after The Beatles was completed.
When the Beatles began their Get Back film project (later released as Let It Be), in January 1969, "Something" was one of many recent compositions that Harrison offered to the group.Martin O'Gorman, "Film on Four", in Mojo Special Limited Edition, p. 73. Leng describes this period as a prolific one for Harrison as a songwriter, comparing it with John Lennon's peak of creativity over 1963–64, yet Harrison's songs received little interest from Lennon and McCartney amid the tense, uncooperative atmosphere within the band. Martin was also unimpressed by "Something" at first, considering it "too weak and derivative", according to music journalist Mikal Gilmore.
The Beatles rehearsed the song at Apple Studio on 28 January. With the proceedings being recorded by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg for the planned documentary film,Martin O'Gorman, "Film on Four", in Mojo Special Limited Edition, pp. 70–71. tapes reveal Harrison discussing his unfinished lyrics for "Something" with Lennon and McCartney, since he had been unable to complete the song's second line, which begins "Attracts me ..." To serve as a temporary filler, Lennon suggested "like a cauliflower", which Harrison then altered to "like a pomegranate". In their study of the available tapes, Doug Sulpy and Ray Schweighardt write that the Beatles gave the song two run-throughs that day, which was the only occasion that they attempted it during the Get Back/Let It Be project.
Harrison solo demo Following the Beatles' brief efforts with "Something" on 28 January, Harrison talked with Lennon and Yoko Ono about recording a solo album of his unused songs, since he had already stockpiled enough compositions "for the next ten years", given his usual allocation of two tracks per album, and to "preserve this, the Beatle bit, more". Lennon offered his support for the idea, similarly keen that his and Ono's recording projects outside the Beatles could continue without jeopardising the band's future. On 25 February 1969 – Harrison's 26th birthday – he entered Abbey Road Studios and taped solo demos of "Something", "Old Brown Shoe" and "All Things Must Pass", the last two of which had also been rejected recently by Lennon and McCartney.
With Ken Scott serving as engineer, Harrison recorded a live take of "Something", featuring electric guitar and vocal.Mark Lewisohn, liner notes in booklet accompanying the Beatles' Anthology 3 album (Apple Records, 1996; produced by George Martin), p. 37. By this point, Harrison had completed the lyrics, although he included an extra verse, sung to a counter-melody, over the section that would comprise his guitar solo on the Beatles' subsequent official recording. This demo version of "Something" remained unreleased until its inclusion on the Beatles Anthology 3 in 1996.
Joe Cocker demo In March 1969, Harrison gave "Something" to Joe Cocker to record, having decided that it was more likely to become a hit with Cocker than with Lomax. Referring to this and similar examples where Harrison placed his overlooked songs with other recording artists, Ken Scott has rebutted the idea that he lacked confidence as a songwriter in the Beatles, saying: