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Something (Beatles song)

January 26, 2023

"Something" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1969 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.[3][4] 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.

"Something"
1989 UK reissue picture sleeve
Single by the Beatles
from the album Abbey Road
A-side"Come Together" (double A-side)
Released6 October 1969 (1969-10-06)
Recorded2 May, 5 May, 16 July, 15 August 1969
StudioEMI and Olympic, London
GenreRock, pop,[1] soft rock[2]
Length2:59
LabelApple
Songwriter(s)George Harrison
Producer(s)George Martin
The Beatles singles chronology
"The Ballad of John and Yoko"
(1969) 		"Something" / "Come Together"
(1969) 		"Let It Be"
(1970)
Song sample
Promotional film
"Something" on YouTube

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. 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 Stone's 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

 
Harrison identified Ray Charles as one of his sources of inspiration for the song.

George Harrison began writing "Something" in September 1968, during a session for the Beatles' self-titled double album, also known as "the White Album".[5] 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.[6] Harrison suspended work on the song,[7] believing that with the tune having come to him so easily, it might have been a melody from another song.[8] In I, Me, Mine, he wrote that the middle eight "took some time to sort out".[9]

The opening lyric was taken from the title of "Something in the Way She Moves", a track by Harrison's fellow Apple Records artist James Taylor.[10][11] While Harrison imagined the composition in the style of Ray Charles,[12] his inspiration for "Something" was his wife, Pattie Boyd.[13][14] 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."[15]

Having begun to write love songs that were directed at both God and a woman, with his White Album track "Long, Long, Long",[16] Harrison later cited alternative sources for his inspiration for "Something".[17] 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;[18] 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."[19] By 1996, Harrison had denied writing "Something" for Boyd.[11] 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.[11]

Composition

In the version issued on the Beatles' 1969 album Abbey Road, which was the first release for the song,[20] "Something" runs at a speed of around 66 beats per minute and is in common time throughout. It begins with a five-note guitar figure, which functions as the song's chorus, since it is repeated before each of the verses and also closes the track.[21] 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.[22][23] 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.[24] The melody returns to C major for the guitar solo, the third verse, and the outro.[22]

Leng considers that, lyrically and musically, "Something" reflects "doubt and striving to attain an uncertain goal".[24] Author Ian Inglis writes of the confident statements that Harrison makes throughout regarding his feelings for Boyd.[25] Referring to lines in the song's verses,[26] 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.'"[25] 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",[26] 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".[25] 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".[1]

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".[5] Despite Thomas's enthusiasm for the new composition, Harrison chose to focus on "Piggies".[27] He told Thomas that he intended to offer "Something" to singer Jackie Lomax,[5] whose debut album Harrison was producing for Apple Records.[28] "Something" was not among the tracks released on Lomax's album,[29] much of which was recorded in Los Angeles after The Beatles was completed.[30]

After Harrison rejoined the Beatles in January 1969 for their Get Back film project (later released as Let It Be), "Something" was one of many recent compositions that he offered to the group.[31] 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,[32] yet Harrison's songs received little interest from Lennon and McCartney amid the tense, uncooperative atmosphere within the band.[33][34] Martin was also unimpressed by "Something" at first, considering it "too weak and derivative", according to music journalist Mikal Gilmore.[33]

The Beatles rehearsed the song at Apple Studio on 28 January.[35] With the proceedings being recorded by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg for the planned documentary film,[36] 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 ..."[37] To serve as a temporary filler, Lennon suggested "like a cauliflower", which Harrison then altered to "like a pomegranate".[5][38] 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.[39]

Harrison solo demo

Following the Beatles' brief efforts with "Something" on 28 January,[40] 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,[41] and to "preserve this, the Beatle bit, more".[42] Lennon offered his support for the idea,[42] similarly keen that his and Ono's recording projects outside the Beatles could continue without jeopardising the band's future.[40] On 25 February 1969 – his 26th birthday – Harrison entered Abbey Road Studios and taped solo demos of "Something", "Old Brown Shoe" and "All Things Must Pass",[43][44] the last two of which had also been rejected recently by Lennon and McCartney.[45]

With Ken Scott serving as his engineer,[46] he recorded a live take of "Something", featuring electric guitar and vocal.[47][48] 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.[24] This demo version of "Something" remained unreleased until its inclusion on the Beatles' outtake collection Anthology 3 in 1996.[49][nb 1]

Joe Cocker demo

In March 1969, Harrison gave "Something" to Joe Cocker to record,[52] having decided that it was more likely to become a hit with Cocker than with Lomax.[53] 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:

I think he was totally confident about the songs. The insecurity may have been, if the Beatles kept going, "How many songs am I going to be able to get on each album?", and with the backlog sort of mounting up ... [to] get it out there, and get something from it.[54]

Assisted by Harrison, Cocker recorded a demo of the song at Apple.[5] While musicologist Walter Everett suggests that this was the same recording of "Something" that appeared on the Joe Cocker! album in November 1969,[52] Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn writes that Cocker subsequently remade the track.[5]

Recording and production

Main article: Abbey Road

George's "Something" was out of left field. It was about Pattie, and it appealed to me because it has a very beautiful melody and is a really structured song ... I think George thought my bass-playing was a little bit busy. Again, from my side, I was trying to contribute the best I could, but maybe it was his turn to tell me I was too busy.[55]

– Paul McCartney, 2000

The Beatles undertook the recording of Abbey Road with a sense of discipline and cooperation that had largely been absent while making the White Album and Let It Be.[56][57] Having temporarily left the group in January 1969 partly as a result of McCartney's criticism of his musicianship, Harrison exhibited a greater level of assertiveness regarding his place in the band, particularly while they worked on his compositions "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun".[58] In addition, like Lennon and McCartney, Martin had come to fully appreciate Harrison as a songwriter, later saying: "I first recognised that he really had a great talent when we did 'Here Comes the Sun.' But when he brought in 'Something,' it was something else ... It was a tremendous work – and so simple."[59]

The group recorded "Something" on 16 April before Harrison decided to redo the song, a new basic track for which was then completed at Abbey Road on 2 May. The line-up was Harrison on Leslie-effected rhythm guitar, Lennon on piano, McCartney on bass, Ringo Starr on drums, and guest musician Billy Preston playing Hammond organ. On 5 May, at Olympic Sound Studios, McCartney re-recorded his bass part and Harrison added lead guitar.[52] According to EMI engineer Geoff Emerick, Harrison asked McCartney to simplify his playing, but McCartney refused.[60] At this point, the song ran to eight minutes, due to the inclusion of an extended, jam-like coda led by Lennon's piano.[10]

After taking a break from recording,[61][62] the band returned to "Something" on 11 July, when Harrison overdubbed what would turn out to be a temporary vocal.[52][63] With the resulting reduction mix, much of the coda, along with almost all of Lennon's playing on the main part of the song, was cut from the recording. The piano can be heard only in the middle eight, specifically during the descending run that follows each pair of "I don't know" vocal lines.[52][nb 2] On 16 July, Harrison recorded a new vocal,[67] with McCartney overdubbing his harmony vocal over the middle eight and Starr adding both a second hi-hat part and a cymbal.[52]

Following another reduction mix, at which point the remainder of the coda was excised from the track, Martin-arranged string orchestration was overdubbed on 15 August, as Harrison, working in the adjacent studio at Abbey Road, re-recorded his lead guitar part live.[52] Writing for Rolling Stone in 2002, David Fricke described the Beatles' version of "Something" as "actually two moods in one: the pillowy yearning of the verses ... and the golden thunder of the bridge, the latter driven by Ringo Starr's military flourish on a high-hat cymbal".[59] Leng highlights Harrison's guitar solo on the recording as "a performance that is widely regarded as one of the great guitar solos", and one in which Harrison incorporates the gamaks associated with Indian classical music, following his study of the sitar in 1965–68, while also foreshadowing the expressive style he would adopt on slide guitar as a solo artist.[68]

Release

Selection for single release

They blessed me with a couple of B-sides in the past, but this is the first time I've had an A-side. Big deal, eh?[5]

– George Harrison to BBC reporter David Wigg, 8 October 1969

Apple Records issued Abbey Road on 26 September 1969,[69] with "Something" sequenced as the second track, following Lennon's "Come Together".[70] Lennon considered "Something" to be the best song on the album.[11][71] Having ensured that "Old Brown Shoe" was chosen as the B-side for the Beatles' single "The Ballad of John and Yoko", according to his later recollection,[72] Lennon now pushed Allen Klein to release "Something" as a single from Abbey Road. Coupled with "Come Together", the single was issued on 6 October in America (as Apple 2654) and 31 October in Britain (as Apple R5814).[70][73]

The release marked the first time that a Harrison composition had been afforded A-side treatment on a Beatles single,[74] as well as the only time during their career that a single was issued in the UK featuring tracks already available on an album.[75] In a 1990 letter to Mark Lewisohn, Klein rebutted a claim made by Lewisohn in his book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, that the single was intended as a money-making exercise: Klein said it was purely a mark of Lennon's regard for "Something" and "to point out George as a writer, and give him courage to go in and do his own LP. Which he did."[5][nb 3] Following the Beatles' break-up in April 1970, Harrison's ascendancy as a songwriter would continue with his triple album All Things Must Pass,[77][78] building on the promise of White Album tracks such as "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"[79] and his two contributions to Abbey Road.[80][81]

Promotional film

 
Harrison and Boyd in the "Something" film clip

The promotional film for "Something" was shot in late October 1969, not long after Lennon privately announced that he was leaving the band. By this time, the band members had grown apart. As a result, the film consisted of separate clips, edited together, featuring the Beatles walking around the grounds of their homes with their respective wives.[82] Harrison's segment shows him and Boyd together in the garden at Kinfauns; in author John Winn's description, Harrison appears "solemn" while Boyd is seen "smiling sweetly" and "sporting leather and fur coats". Winn also comments on the attractiveness of all the wives in contrast to the unkempt appearance of McCartney, especially, who had sunk into depression at the realisation that the Beatles were over.[82] The four segments were edited and compiled into a single film clip by Neil Aspinall.[83] Writing in The New York Times following Aspinall's death in 2008, Allan Kozinn said: "What Mr. Aspinall's idyllic film avoided showing was that the Beatles were at that point barely on speaking terms. In the film, no two Beatles are seen together."[83]

In 2015, following restoration overseen by Apple's Jonathan Clyde,[84] the "Something" promo film was included in the Beatles' video compilation 1 and its expanded edition, 1+.[85] Rolling Stone journalist Rob Sheffield comments on the significance of the clip, with regard to the band's history:

[E]ach couple projects a totally different vibe – George and Patti peacocking in their hippie-royalty finery, Paul and Linda on the farm in Scotland with Martha the sheepdog, Ringo and Maureen goofing around on motorbikes, John and Yoko serene in their matching black robes. Each Beatle looks like he's found what he was looking for – but they're heading for four separate futures.[86]

In her review of 1+, for Paste, Gillian Gaar says that with the Beatles' promotional films of their singles, from "Love Me Do" to "Something" (the last one they made during their career), "you can see the development of the promo clip, progressing from a short film that simply served up a straight performance to a piece of work that was striving to be something more artistic."[87]

Reception

Contemporary reviews

Time magazine declared "Something" to be the best track on Abbey Road,[88] while John Mendelsohn wrote in Rolling Stone: "George's vocal, containing less adenoids and more grainy Paul tunefulness than ever before, is one of many highlights on his 'Something,' some of the others being more excellent drum work, a dead catchy guitar line, perfectly subdued strings, and an unusually nice melody. Both his and Joe Cocker's version will suffice nicely until Ray Charles gets around to it."[89] Writing in Saturday Review magazine, Ellen Sander described "Something" as "certainly one of the most beautiful songs George Harrison has ever written" and added: "He feels his way through the song, instinctively cutting through its body and into the core, emoting so clearly and so gracefully that at the moment he peals 'I don't know, I don't know,' it is shown that even what is not known can be understood."[90]

According to Beatles biographer Nicholas Schaffner, "Something" showed Harrison following McCartney's populist approach and some "long-haired music critics" were repelled by the song's use of lush MOR-style orchestration.[91] An outspoken critic of Abbey Road, The New York Times's Nik Cohn derided it and "Here Comes the Sun" as "mediocrity incarnate".[92] By contrast, Lon Goddard of Record Mirror described the song as "another beautiful Harrison composition" in the style of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", saying that "It leaps scales in its heavy orchestral arrangement, then drifts down to George's simple but effective guitar style."[93]

In his review of the single, Derek Johnson of the NME lauded the track as "a real quality hunk of pop" with a "strident lead guitar which exudes a mean and moody quality". Johnson stated his regret that Harrison "isn't featured more regularly as a singer", and concluded of "Something": "It's a song that grows on you, and mark my words, it will – in a big way!"[94][95] As guest singles reviewer for Melody Maker, Keef Hartley said it was "probably the best track" on Abbey Road, adding: "What I was waiting for was that guitar solo because George Harrison is just about the only guitar player I know of who can plan a solo so it doesn't sound as though it is planned."[96]

Commercial performance

Although its commercial impact was lessened by the ongoing success of the parent album,[97] "Something" / "Come Together" was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on 27 October.[98] During the single's chart run on Billboard in the US, "Something" peaked at number 3 until the magazine changed its practice of counting sales and airplay separately for each song; following this change on 29 November,[99] the single topped the Billboard Hot 100,[100][101] for one week.[102] "Come Together" / "Something" became the Beatles' eighteenth number 1 single in Billboard, surpassing Elvis Presley's record of seventeen.[103] In the other US national charts, Record World listed "Something" / "Come Together" at number 1 for two weeks and "Come Together" / "Something" for the remaining three weeks at number 1,[104] while in Cash Box magazine, which continued to rank each song separately, "Something" peaked at number 2 and "Come Together" spent three weeks at number 1.[105]

As the preferred side, "Something" was number 1 in Canada (for five weeks), Australia (five weeks), West Germany (two weeks), New Zealand and Singapore.[80] The combined sides reached number 4 in Britain.[106] There, the release was highly unusual,[5] given the traditional preference for non-album singles.[107] In addition, according to former Mojo editor Paul Du Noyer, "so enormous were sales of Abbey Road that demand for the single was inevitably dampened."[11]

Along with "Here Comes the Sun", "Something" was included on the Beatles' 1973 compilation album 1967–1970,[108] thereby giving Harrison two of the four tracks representing Abbey Road.[109] In 1976, Capitol sequenced it as the opening track of The Best of George Harrison, a compilation that, against Harrison's wishes, combined his best-known compositions from the Beatles era with his hits as a solo artist.[110][111] The song was subsequently included on the band's themed compilations Love Songs and The Beatles Ballads.[112]

On 17 February 1999, "Something" was certified double Platinum by the RIAA.[113] In its 2014 list titled "The Beatles' 50 Biggest Billboard Hits", Billboard places the double A-side single in sixth place, immediately after "Let It Be" and ahead of "Hello, Goodbye".[114][nb 4]

Retrospective assessments and legacy

Harrison and Apple publicist Derek Taylor had a standing joke. Whenever either of them had an idea, they would quip "This could be the big one." "Something", written in mid-1968 on a piano in Abbey Road during a break from work on The Beatles, really did become the big one for Harrison.[115]

– Author Ian MacDonald

Along with "Here Comes the Sun", the song established Harrison as a composer to match Lennon and McCartney.[116][117] Writing in his book Revolution in the Head, author and critic Ian MacDonald described "Something" as "the acme of Harrison's achievement as a writer". MacDonald highlighted the song's "key-structure of classical grace and panoramic effect", and cited the lyrics to verse two as "its author's finest lines – at once deeper and more elegant than almost anything his colleagues ever wrote".[10]

Like Lennon, both McCartney and Starr held the song in high regard.[118][119] In the 2000 book The Beatles Anthology, Starr paired "Something" with "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" as "Two of the finest love songs ever written", adding, "they're really on a par with what John and Paul or anyone else of that time wrote"; McCartney said it was "George's greatest track – with 'Here Comes the Sun' and 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps'".[55] Among Harrison's other peers, Paul Simon described "Something" as a "masterpiece" and Elton John said: "'Something' is probably one of the best love songs ever, ever, ever written ... It's better than 'Yesterday,' much better ... It's like the song I've been chasing for the last thirty-five years."[120]

In a 2002 article for The Morning News, Kenneth Womack included Harrison's guitar solo on the track among his "Ten Great Beatles Moments".[121] Describing the instrumental break as "the song's greatest lyrical feature – even more lyrical, interestingly enough, than the lyrics themselves", Womack concluded: "A masterpiece in simplicity, Harrison's solo reaches toward the sublime, wrestles with it in a bouquet of downward syncopation, and hoists it yet again in a moment of supreme grace."[122][123] Guitar World included the performance as the magazine's featured solo in June 2011.[124] Later that year, "Something" was one of the two "key tracks" highlighted by Rolling Stone when the magazine placed Harrison at number 11 on its list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists".[125][nb 5]

In July 1970, "Something" received the Ivor Novello Award for "Best Song Musically and Lyrically" of 1969.[128] In 2005, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) named it as the 64th-greatest song ever. According to the BBC, the song "shows more clearly than any other song in The Beatles' canon that there were three great songwriters in the band rather than just two".[7] The Beatles' official website states that "Something" "underlined the ascendance of George Harrison as a major songwriting force".[129]

"Something" became the second most covered Beatles song after "Yesterday".[59][130][131] In 1999, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) named it as the 17th-most performed song of the twentieth century,[132] with 5 million performances.[133] In 2000, Mojo ranked "Something" at number 14 in the magazine's list of "The 100 Greatest Songs of All Time".[60] It was ranked 273rd on Rolling Stone's 2004 list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time",[134] 278th on the magazine's revised list in 2010,[135] and 110th in 2021.[136] In 2006, Mojo placed it 7th in the list of "The 101 Greatest Beatles Songs",[137] while four years later, the track appeared at number 6 on a similar list compiled by Rolling Stone.[60][130] In 2019, the staff of Entertainment Weekly ranked "Something" at number 5 in their list of the Beatles' best songs.[138]

Cover versions

Shirley Bassey

"Something"
 
A-side label of the UK single
Single by Shirley Bassey
from the album Something
B-side"Easy to Be Hard"
ReleasedJune 1970 (1970-06)
GenrePop, easy listening
Length3:35
LabelUnited Artists
Songwriter(s)George Harrison
Producer(s)Johnny Harris, Tony Colton

Among the song's many cover versions, Welsh singer Shirley Bassey recorded a successful version of "Something".[139] It was released in 1970 as the title track to her album of the same name.[140] Also issued as a single, it became Bassey's first top-ten hit in the UK since "I (Who Have Nothing)" in 1963, peaking at number 4 and spending 22 weeks on the chart.[141] The single also reached the top twenty in other European countries[142] and peaked at number 6 on Billboard's Easy Listening (later Adult Contemporary) chart.[143]

Bassey said she had been unaware of the song's origins when recording "Something".[140] She later suggested that she and Harrison could become a singer-and-songwriter pairing on the scale of Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach.[11] After reading these comments in 1970,[144] Harrison wrote "When Every Song Is Sung" with Bassey in mind, although she never recorded the composition.[145]

Frank Sinatra

Frank Sinatra was particularly impressed with "Something", calling it "the greatest love song of the past 50 years",[7][146] despite having long disapproved of the Beatles.[5] According to Du Noyer, he "especially admired the way the lyric evokes a girl who isn't even present".[11] Aside from performing "Something" numerous times in concert,[147] Sinatra recorded the song for a single in October 1970[148] and then for his 1980 triple album Trilogy: Past Present Future.[149]

During his live performances, Sinatra was known to mistakenly introduce "Something" as a Lennon–McCartney composition.[147] By 1978, he had begun correctly crediting Harrison as its author.[150][nb 6] Harrison went on to adopt Sinatra's minor lyrical change (in the song's middle eight, singing "You stick around, Jack ...") in his live performances over 1991–92.[152] In The Beatles Anthology, Harrison says he viewed Sinatra as being part of "the generation before me" and so only later came to appreciate the American singer's adoption of the song.[55]

Other artists

 
James Brown's recording was Harrison's favourite cover version of "Something".

Harrison's composition began accumulating cover versions almost immediately after the release of Abbey Road, starting with Joe Cocker's recording.[139] The song became a standard and was readily adapted by artists in a wide range of styles, including easy-listening and instrumental jazz.[1] In Nicholas Schaffner's description, the many interpretations made the song ubiquitous "from the Borscht Belt to the dentist's waiting room".[153]

Lena Horne recorded "Something" in the jazz style for her 1970 album with guitarist Gabor Szabo, titled Lena & Gabor.[154] An instrumental version by Booker T. & the M.G.'s, from their Abbey Road tribute album McLemore Avenue,[155] peaked at number 76 on the Billboard Hot 100 in August 1970.[156] The R&B groups the O'Jays[1] and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles also covered it, as did easy-listening stars such as Bert Kaempfert and Liberace.[139] Fulfilling Harrison's hopes, Ray Charles issued a version on his 1971 album Volcanic Action of My Soul.[130]

Referring to the song's adoption by easy-listening artists, Harrison later said: "When even Liberace covered it [in 1970], you know that it's one of them that ends up in an elevator ..."[11][157] Harrison attributed its popularity among other artists to the easily mastered, five-note melody. Du Noyer partly refutes this explanation, saying that it was equally a vehicle for "the most advanced vocalists" such as Peggy Lee, along with Sinatra and Bassey.[11]

At the time I wasn't particularly thrilled that Frank Sinatra did "Something" … I was more interested when Smokey Robinson did it and when James Brown did it. But I'm very pleased now, whoever's done it. I realise that the sign of a good song is when it has lots of cover versions.[55]

– George Harrison, 2000

"Something" was one of the very few Beatles songs that Elvis Presley chose to play;[158] Lewisohn highlights his interpretation among the "dozens of high-profile covers".[5] Presley performed it on his 1973 Aloha from Hawaii TV special, the recording from which appeared on the accompanying bestselling album.[159] A version from Presley's August 1970 Las Vegas concert season subsequently appeared on the box sets Walk a Mile in My Shoes: The Essential '70s Masters (1995)[160] and Live in Las Vegas (2001).[161] In 1974, a recording by Johnny Rodriguez reached number 6 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles chart[162] and number 85 on the Hot 100.[163] In Canada, Rodriguez's single peaked at number 11 on the RPM country chart.[164]

By 1972, over 150 artists had recorded "Something".[165][166] In his 1996 Harrison biography The Quiet One, Alan Clayson said the song had attracted "nearly 200 cover versions".[139] In 1972, Harrison told music journalist Mike Hennessey that the Robinson and Cocker versions were among his favourites.[165] In later interviews, he said that the best cover version was a recording by James Brown,[157][167] in which the singer declares "I got to believe in something!" over the main riff.[139] Harrison commented that the recording was relatively obscure in Brown's catalogue: "It was one of his B-sides. I have it on my jukebox at home. It's absolutely brilliant."[168]

Harrison tributes

Bruce Springsteen opened his first show after Harrison's death on 29 November 2001 by playing "Something", followed by a rendition of Harrison's solo hit "My Sweet Lord".[169] Elton John gave a solo performance of the song at New York's Carnegie Hall in April 2002, as part of a one-hour Harrison tribute during the eleventh annual Rainforest Foundation concert.[170]

In honour of Harrison's fondness for the instrument, Paul McCartney played a ukulele rendition of "Something" throughout his 2002–03 world tour[171] and included the track on his Back in the U.S. and Back in the World live albums.[172] At the Concert for George, held at London's Royal Albert Hall on 29 November 2002,[173] he and Eric Clapton performed a version that began with McCartney alone on ukulele, then reverted to the familiar rock arrangement with Clapton taking over as lead singer and backing from Starr, Preston and others.[174] Following its appearance in David Leland's film Concert for George (2003) and on the accompanying live album, this performance of "Something" was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.[175]

Bob Dylan also played the song live during his November 2002 concerts, as a tribute to Harrison.[176][177] McCartney continued to perform "Something", adopting the Concert for George mix of ukulele and rock backing.[178] A version with this musical arrangement was included on his 2009 album Good Evening New York City.[179]

Live performances by Harrison

Harrison played "Something" at the two Concert for Bangladesh shows, held at Madison Square Garden in New York on 1 August 1971.[180] His first live performance as a solo artist, he was backed by a large band that included Starr, Preston, Clapton and Leon Russell.[181][182] The version used on the live album and in the 1972 concert film was taken from the evening show that day, when Harrison played it as the final song before returning to perform "Bangla Desh" as an encore.[183]

Harrison included "Something" in all of his subsequent, and rare, full-length concert appearances.[184] For his 1974 North American tour with Ravi Shankar, he had been reluctant to feature any material from the Beatles' catalogue,[185] but at the urging of Shankar and Preston during rehearsals, he added "Something" to the setlist.[186] To the disappointment of many fans, he chose to alter some of the song's lyrics (such as changing the first line to "If there's something in the way, remove it").[187] Further distancing himself from the Beatles' legacy, Harrison told journalists at the start of the tour that he would join a group with Lennon "any day" but rejected the idea of working again with McCartney, since he preferred Willie Weeks as a bassist.[188] MacDonald comments that this statement was likely in reference to McCartney's "too fussily extemporised" bass part on the Beatles' 1969 recording.[10] With Boyd having left Harrison for Clapton earlier in 1974,[189] Larry Sloman of Rolling Stone described the reworked "Something" as "a moving diary of his love life".[190]

A version from Harrison's December 1991 tour of Japan with Clapton – Harrison's only other tour as a solo artist[191] – appears on the Live in Japan double album (1992).[192] Inglis writes of the track having "extra poignancy" by this time, "in that the woman for whom it was written had been married to, and divorced from, Harrison and Clapton in turn".[193] Inglis adds: "It is not a new interpretation of the song, but it does suggest a new perspective, in which words and music are used by two close friends to reflect on the lives they have led."[194]

Personnel

According to Walter Everett,[52] Bruce Spizer[195] and Kenneth Womack:[196]

The Beatles

Additional musicians

Charts and certifications

Notes

  1. ^ The Anthology 3 track omits a piano overdub that was present on the acetate from Harrison's birthday session.[50][51]
  2. ^ Lennon later reprised the piano chords from the discarded coda in his 1970 song "Remember".[64][65] Music critic Richie Unterberger describes this coda as "unclassifiably strange" and at odds, in melody, mood and time signature, with Harrison's composition.[63] The version of "Something" with the piano-led jam was one of several tracks considered but passed over for inclusion on the three Anthology albums.[66]
  3. ^ Allan Steckler, Klein's colleague, dismissed another claim made by Beatles biographers, that Klein was merely attempting to win Harrison's support. Steckler said: "Klein believed in George's talent and wanted to enhance his reputation as a songwriter."[76]
  4. ^ Additionally, "Something" is placed again at number 30, representing the song's performance before the November 1969 Hot 100 rule change.[114]
  5. ^ Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters named their 1995 song "Oh, George" after Harrison[126] and based his guitar solo on Harrison's playing on "Something".[127]
  6. ^ Harrison recalled that when he appeared with Michael Jackson on a BBC radio show, in 1979,[151] the show's host referred to "Something" and Jackson said, surprised: 'Oh, you wrote that? I thought it was a Lennon–McCartney."[11]

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Further reading

  • Aspden, Peter (23 September 2019). "Something – Sinatra called it 'the greatest love song of the past 50 years'". ft.com. Retrieved 24 November 2020.

External links

 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Abbey Road.
  • Full lyrics for the song at the Beatles' official website
  • "Something" singles at Discogs

January 26, 2023
something, beatles, song, something, song, english, rock, band, beatles, from, their, 1969, album, abbey, road, written, george, harrison, band, lead, guitarist, together, with, second, contribution, abbey, road, here, comes, widely, viewed, music, historians,. Something is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1969 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 3 4 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 Something 1989 UK reissue picture sleeveSingle by the Beatlesfrom the album Abbey RoadA side Come Together double A side Released6 October 1969 1969 10 06 Recorded2 May 5 May 16 July 15 August 1969StudioEMI and Olympic LondonGenreRock pop 1 soft rock 2 Length2 59LabelAppleSongwriter s George HarrisonProducer s George MartinThe Beatles singles chronology The Ballad of John and Yoko 1969 Something Come Together 1969 Let It Be 1970 Song sample source source track filehelpPromotional film Something on YouTubeThe 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 Other artists who have covered it include Elvis Presley Ray Charles Booker T amp 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 Stone s 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 Contents 1 Background and inspiration 2 Composition 3 Pre Abbey Road recording history 3 1 The Beatles Get Back Let It Be rehearsals 3 2 Harrison solo demo 3 3 Joe Cocker demo 4 Recording and production 5 Release 5 1 Selection for single release 5 2 Promotional film 6 Reception 6 1 Contemporary reviews 6 2 Commercial performance 7 Retrospective assessments and legacy 8 Cover versions 8 1 Shirley Bassey 8 2 Frank Sinatra 8 3 Other artists 8 4 Harrison tributes 9 Live performances by Harrison 10 Personnel 11 Charts and certifications 11 1 Beatles version 11 2 Shirley Bassey version 11 3 Certifications Beatles version 12 Notes 13 References 14 Sources 15 Further reading 16 External linksBackground and inspiration Edit Harrison identified Ray Charles as one of his sources of inspiration for the song George Harrison began writing Something in September 1968 during a session for the Beatles self titled double album also known as the White Album 5 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 6 Harrison suspended work on the song 7 believing that with the tune having come to him so easily it might have been a melody from another song 8 In I Me Mine he wrote that the middle eight took some time to sort out 9 The opening lyric was taken from the title of Something in the Way She Moves a track by Harrison s fellow Apple Records artist James Taylor 10 11 While Harrison imagined the composition in the style of Ray Charles 12 his inspiration for Something was his wife Pattie Boyd 13 14 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 15 Having begun to write love songs that were directed at both God and a woman with his White Album track Long Long Long 16 Harrison later cited alternative sources for his inspiration for Something 17 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 18 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 19 By 1996 Harrison had denied writing Something for Boyd 11 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 11 Composition EditIn the version issued on the Beatles 1969 album Abbey Road which was the first release for the song 20 Something runs at a speed of around 66 beats per minute and is in common time throughout It begins with a five note guitar figure which functions as the song s chorus since it is repeated before each of the verses and also closes the track 21 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 22 23 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 24 The melody returns to C major for the guitar solo the third verse and the outro 22 Leng considers that lyrically and musically Something reflects doubt and striving to attain an uncertain goal 24 Author Ian Inglis writes of the confident statements that Harrison makes throughout regarding his feelings for Boyd 25 Referring to lines in the song s verses 26 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 25 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 26 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 25 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 1 Pre Abbey Road recording history EditThe Beatles Get Back Let It Be rehearsals Edit 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 5 Despite Thomas s enthusiasm for the new composition Harrison chose to focus on Piggies 27 He told Thomas that he intended to offer Something to singer Jackie Lomax 5 whose debut album Harrison was producing for Apple Records 28 Something was not among the tracks released on Lomax s album 29 much of which was recorded in Los Angeles after The Beatles was completed 30 After Harrison rejoined the Beatles in January 1969 for their Get Back film project later released as Let It Be Something was one of many recent compositions that he offered to the group 31 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 32 yet Harrison s songs received little interest from Lennon and McCartney amid the tense uncooperative atmosphere within the band 33 34 Martin was also unimpressed by Something at first considering it too weak and derivative according to music journalist Mikal Gilmore 33 The Beatles rehearsed the song at Apple Studio on 28 January 35 With the proceedings being recorded by director Michael Lindsay Hogg for the planned documentary film 36 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 37 To serve as a temporary filler Lennon suggested like a cauliflower which Harrison then altered to like a pomegranate 5 38 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 39 Harrison solo demo Edit Following the Beatles brief efforts with Something on 28 January 40 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 41 and to preserve this the Beatle bit more 42 Lennon offered his support for the idea 42 similarly keen that his and Ono s recording projects outside the Beatles could continue without jeopardising the band s future 40 On 25 February 1969 his 26th birthday Harrison entered Abbey Road Studios and taped solo demos of Something Old Brown Shoe and All Things Must Pass 43 44 the last two of which had also been rejected recently by Lennon and McCartney 45 With Ken Scott serving as his engineer 46 he recorded a live take of Something featuring electric guitar and vocal 47 48 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 24 This demo version of Something remained unreleased until its inclusion on the Beatles outtake collection Anthology 3 in 1996 49 nb 1 Joe Cocker demo Edit In March 1969 Harrison gave Something to Joe Cocker to record 52 having decided that it was more likely to become a hit with Cocker than with Lomax 53 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 I think he was totally confident about the songs The insecurity may have been if the Beatles kept going How many songs am I going to be able to get on each album and with the backlog sort of mounting up to get it out there and get something from it 54 Assisted by Harrison Cocker recorded a demo of the song at Apple 5 While musicologist Walter Everett suggests that this was the same recording of Something that appeared on the Joe Cocker album in November 1969 52 Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn writes that Cocker subsequently remade the track 5 Recording and production EditMain article Abbey Road George s Something was out of left field It was about Pattie and it appealed to me because it has a very beautiful melody and is a really structured song I think George thought my bass playing was a little bit busy Again from my side I was trying to contribute the best I could but maybe it was his turn to tell me I was too busy 55 Paul McCartney 2000 The Beatles undertook the recording of Abbey Road with a sense of discipline and cooperation that had largely been absent while making the White Album and Let It Be 56 57 Having temporarily left the group in January 1969 partly as a result of McCartney s criticism of his musicianship Harrison exhibited a greater level of assertiveness regarding his place in the band particularly while they worked on his compositions Something and Here Comes the Sun 58 In addition like Lennon and McCartney Martin had come to fully appreciate Harrison as a songwriter later saying I first recognised that he really had a great talent when we did Here Comes the Sun But when he brought in Something it was something else It was a tremendous work and so simple 59 The group recorded Something on 16 April before Harrison decided to redo the song a new basic track for which was then completed at Abbey Road on 2 May The line up was Harrison on Leslie effected rhythm guitar Lennon on piano McCartney on bass Ringo Starr on drums and guest musician Billy Preston playing Hammond organ On 5 May at Olympic Sound Studios McCartney re recorded his bass part and Harrison added lead guitar 52 According to EMI engineer Geoff Emerick Harrison asked McCartney to simplify his playing but McCartney refused 60 At this point the song ran to eight minutes due to the inclusion of an extended jam like coda led by Lennon s piano 10 After taking a break from recording 61 62 the band returned to Something on 11 July when Harrison overdubbed what would turn out to be a temporary vocal 52 63 With the resulting reduction mix much of the coda along with almost all of Lennon s playing on the main part of the song was cut from the recording The piano can be heard only in the middle eight specifically during the descending run that follows each pair of I don t know vocal lines 52 nb 2 On 16 July Harrison recorded a new vocal 67 with McCartney overdubbing his harmony vocal over the middle eight and Starr adding both a second hi hat part and a cymbal 52 Following another reduction mix at which point the remainder of the coda was excised from the track Martin arranged string orchestration was overdubbed on 15 August as Harrison working in the adjacent studio at Abbey Road re recorded his lead guitar part live 52 Writing for Rolling Stone in 2002 David Fricke described the Beatles version of Something as actually two moods in one the pillowy yearning of the verses and the golden thunder of the bridge the latter driven by Ringo Starr s military flourish on a high hat cymbal 59 Leng highlights Harrison s guitar solo on the recording as a performance that is widely regarded as one of the great guitar solos and one in which Harrison incorporates the gamaks associated with Indian classical music following his study of the sitar in 1965 68 while also foreshadowing the expressive style he would adopt on slide guitar as a solo artist 68 Release EditSelection for single release Edit They blessed me with a couple of B sides in the past but this is the first time I ve had an A side Big deal eh 5 George Harrison to BBC reporter David Wigg 8 October 1969 Apple Records issued Abbey Road on 26 September 1969 69 with Something sequenced as the second track following Lennon s Come Together 70 Lennon considered Something to be the best song on the album 11 71 Having ensured that Old Brown Shoe was chosen as the B side for the Beatles single The Ballad of John and Yoko according to his later recollection 72 Lennon now pushed Allen Klein to release Something as a single from Abbey Road Coupled with Come Together the single was issued on 6 October in America as Apple 2654 and 31 October in Britain as Apple R5814 70 73 The release marked the first time that a Harrison composition had been afforded A side treatment on a Beatles single 74 as well as the only time during their career that a single was issued in the UK featuring tracks already available on an album 75 In a 1990 letter to Mark Lewisohn Klein rebutted a claim made by Lewisohn in his book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions that the single was intended as a money making exercise Klein said it was purely a mark of Lennon s regard for Something and to point out George as a writer and give him courage to go in and do his own LP Which he did 5 nb 3 Following the Beatles break up in April 1970 Harrison s ascendancy as a songwriter would continue with his triple album All Things Must Pass 77 78 building on the promise of White Album tracks such as While My Guitar Gently Weeps 79 and his two contributions to Abbey Road 80 81 Promotional film Edit Harrison and Boyd in the Something film clip The promotional film for Something was shot in late October 1969 not long after Lennon privately announced that he was leaving the band By this time the band members had grown apart As a result the film consisted of separate clips edited together featuring the Beatles walking around the grounds of their homes with their respective wives 82 Harrison s segment shows him and Boyd together in the garden at Kinfauns in author John Winn s description Harrison appears solemn while Boyd is seen smiling sweetly and sporting leather and fur coats Winn also comments on the attractiveness of all the wives in contrast to the unkempt appearance of McCartney especially who had sunk into depression at the realisation that the Beatles were over 82 The four segments were edited and compiled into a single film clip by Neil Aspinall 83 Writing in The New York Times following Aspinall s death in 2008 Allan Kozinn said What Mr Aspinall s idyllic film avoided showing was that the Beatles were at that point barely on speaking terms In the film no two Beatles are seen together 83 In 2015 following restoration overseen by Apple s Jonathan Clyde 84 the Something promo film was included in the Beatles video compilation 1 and its expanded edition 1 85 Rolling Stone journalist Rob Sheffield comments on the significance of the clip with regard to the band s history E ach couple projects a totally different vibe George and Patti peacocking in their hippie royalty finery Paul and Linda on the farm in Scotland with Martha the sheepdog Ringo and Maureen goofing around on motorbikes John and Yoko serene in their matching black robes Each Beatle looks like he s found what he was looking for but they re heading for four separate futures 86 In her review of 1 for Paste Gillian Gaar says that with the Beatles promotional films of their singles from Love Me Do to Something the last one they made during their career you can see the development of the promo clip progressing from a short film that simply served up a straight performance to a piece of work that was striving to be something more artistic 87 Reception EditContemporary reviews Edit Time magazine declared Something to be the best track on Abbey Road 88 while John Mendelsohn wrote in Rolling Stone George s vocal containing less adenoids and more grainy Paul tunefulness than ever before is one of many highlights on his Something some of the others being more excellent drum work a dead catchy guitar line perfectly subdued strings and an unusually nice melody Both his and Joe Cocker s version will suffice nicely until Ray Charles gets around to it 89 Writing in Saturday Review magazine Ellen Sander described Something as certainly one of the most beautiful songs George Harrison has ever written and added He feels his way through the song instinctively cutting through its body and into the core emoting so clearly and so gracefully that at the moment he peals I don t know I don t know it is shown that even what is not known can be understood 90 According to Beatles biographer Nicholas Schaffner Something showed Harrison following McCartney s populist approach and some long haired music critics were repelled by the song s use of lush MOR style orchestration 91 An outspoken critic of Abbey Road The New York Times s Nik Cohn derided it and Here Comes the Sun as mediocrity incarnate 92 By contrast Lon Goddard of Record Mirror described the song as another beautiful Harrison composition in the style of While My Guitar Gently Weeps saying that It leaps scales in its heavy orchestral arrangement then drifts down to George s simple but effective guitar style 93 In his review of the single Derek Johnson of the NME lauded the track as a real quality hunk of pop with a strident lead guitar which exudes a mean and moody quality Johnson stated his regret that Harrison isn t featured more regularly as a singer and concluded of Something It s a song that grows on you and mark my words it will in a big way 94 95 As guest singles reviewer for Melody Maker Keef Hartley said it was probably the best track on Abbey Road adding What I was waiting for was that guitar solo because George Harrison is just about the only guitar player I know of who can plan a solo so it doesn t sound as though it is planned 96 Commercial performance Edit Although its commercial impact was lessened by the ongoing success of the parent album 97 Something Come Together was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America RIAA on 27 October 98 During the single s chart run on Billboard in the US Something peaked at number 3 until the magazine changed its practice of counting sales and airplay separately for each song following this change on 29 November 99 the single topped the Billboard Hot 100 100 101 for one week 102 Come Together Something became the Beatles eighteenth number 1 single in Billboard surpassing Elvis Presley s record of seventeen 103 In the other US national charts Record World listed Something Come Together at number 1 for two weeks and Come Together Something for the remaining three weeks at number 1 104 while in Cash Box magazine which continued to rank each song separately Something peaked at number 2 and Come Together spent three weeks at number 1 105 As the preferred side Something was number 1 in Canada for five weeks Australia five weeks West Germany two weeks New Zealand and Singapore 80 The combined sides reached number 4 in Britain 106 There the release was highly unusual 5 given the traditional preference for non album singles 107 In addition according to former Mojo editor Paul Du Noyer so enormous were sales of Abbey Road that demand for the single was inevitably dampened 11 Along with Here Comes the Sun Something was included on the Beatles 1973 compilation album 1967 1970 108 thereby giving Harrison two of the four tracks representing Abbey Road 109 In 1976 Capitol sequenced it as the opening track of The Best of George Harrison a compilation that against Harrison s wishes combined his best known compositions from the Beatles era with his hits as a solo artist 110 111 The song was subsequently included on the band s themed compilations Love Songs and The Beatles Ballads 112 On 17 February 1999 Something was certified double Platinum by the RIAA 113 In its 2014 list titled The Beatles 50 Biggest Billboard Hits Billboard places the double A side single in sixth place immediately after Let It Be and ahead of Hello Goodbye 114 nb 4 Retrospective assessments and legacy EditHarrison and Apple publicist Derek Taylor had a standing joke Whenever either of them had an idea they would quip This could be the big one Something written in mid 1968 on a piano in Abbey Road during a break from work on The Beatles really did become the big one for Harrison 115 Author Ian MacDonald Along with Here Comes the Sun the song established Harrison as a composer to match Lennon and McCartney 116 117 Writing in his book Revolution in the Head author and critic Ian MacDonald described Something as the acme of Harrison s achievement as a writer MacDonald highlighted the song s key structure of classical grace and panoramic effect and cited the lyrics to verse two as its author s finest lines at once deeper and more elegant than almost anything his colleagues ever wrote 10 Like Lennon both McCartney and Starr held the song in high regard 118 119 In the 2000 book The Beatles Anthology Starr paired Something with While My Guitar Gently Weeps as Two of the finest love songs ever written adding they re really on a par with what John and Paul or anyone else of that time wrote McCartney said it was George s greatest track with Here Comes the Sun and While My Guitar Gently Weeps 55 Among Harrison s other peers Paul Simon described Something as a masterpiece and Elton John said Something is probably one of the best love songs ever ever ever written It s better than Yesterday much better It s like the song I ve been chasing for the last thirty five years 120 In a 2002 article for The Morning News Kenneth Womack included Harrison s guitar solo on the track among his Ten Great Beatles Moments 121 Describing the instrumental break as the song s greatest lyrical feature even more lyrical interestingly enough than the lyrics themselves Womack concluded A masterpiece in simplicity Harrison s solo reaches toward the sublime wrestles with it in a bouquet of downward syncopation and hoists it yet again in a moment of supreme grace 122 123 Guitar World included the performance as the magazine s featured solo in June 2011 124 Later that year Something was one of the two key tracks highlighted by Rolling Stone when the magazine placed Harrison at number 11 on its list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists 125 nb 5 In July 1970 Something received the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically of 1969 128 In 2005 the British Broadcasting Corporation BBC named it as the 64th greatest song ever According to the BBC the song shows more clearly than any other song in The Beatles canon that there were three great songwriters in the band rather than just two 7 The Beatles official website states that Something underlined the ascendance of George Harrison as a major songwriting force 129 Something became the second most covered Beatles song after Yesterday 59 130 131 In 1999 Broadcast Music Incorporated BMI named it as the 17th most performed song of the twentieth century 132 with 5 million performances 133 In 2000 Mojo ranked Something at number 14 in the magazine s list of The 100 Greatest Songs of All Time 60 It was ranked 273rd on Rolling Stone s 2004 list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time 134 278th on the magazine s revised list in 2010 135 and 110th in 2021 136 In 2006 Mojo placed it 7th in the list of The 101 Greatest Beatles Songs 137 while four years later the track appeared at number 6 on a similar list compiled by Rolling Stone 60 130 In 2019 the staff of Entertainment Weekly ranked Something at number 5 in their list of the Beatles best songs 138 Cover versions EditShirley Bassey Edit Something A side label of the UK singleSingle by Shirley Basseyfrom the album SomethingB side Easy to Be Hard ReleasedJune 1970 1970 06 GenrePop easy listeningLength3 35LabelUnited ArtistsSongwriter s George HarrisonProducer s Johnny Harris Tony ColtonAmong the song s many cover versions Welsh singer Shirley Bassey recorded a successful version of Something 139 It was released in 1970 as the title track to her album of the same name 140 Also issued as a single it became Bassey s first top ten hit in the UK since I Who Have Nothing in 1963 peaking at number 4 and spending 22 weeks on the chart 141 The single also reached the top twenty in other European countries 142 and peaked at number 6 on Billboard s Easy Listening later Adult Contemporary chart 143 Bassey said she had been unaware of the song s origins when recording Something 140 She later suggested that she and Harrison could become a singer and songwriter pairing on the scale of Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach 11 After reading these comments in 1970 144 Harrison wrote When Every Song Is Sung with Bassey in mind although she never recorded the composition 145 Frank Sinatra Edit Frank Sinatra was particularly impressed with Something calling it the greatest love song of the past 50 years 7 146 despite having long disapproved of the Beatles 5 According to Du Noyer he especially admired the way the lyric evokes a girl who isn t even present 11 Aside from performing Something numerous times in concert 147 Sinatra recorded the song for a single in October 1970 148 and then for his 1980 triple album Trilogy Past Present Future 149 During his live performances Sinatra was known to mistakenly introduce Something as a Lennon McCartney composition 147 By 1978 he had begun correctly crediting Harrison as its author 150 nb 6 Harrison went on to adopt Sinatra s minor lyrical change in the song s middle eight singing You stick around Jack in his live performances over 1991 92 152 In The Beatles Anthology Harrison says he viewed Sinatra as being part of the generation before me and so only later came to appreciate the American singer s adoption of the song 55 Other artists Edit James Brown s recording was Harrison s favourite cover version of Something Harrison s composition began accumulating cover versions almost immediately after the release of Abbey Road starting with Joe Cocker s recording 139 The song became a standard and was readily adapted by artists in a wide range of styles including easy listening and instrumental jazz 1 In Nicholas Schaffner s description the many interpretations made the song ubiquitous from the Borscht Belt to the dentist s waiting room 153 Lena Horne recorded Something in the jazz style for her 1970 album with guitarist Gabor Szabo titled Lena amp Gabor 154 An instrumental version by Booker T amp the M G s from their Abbey Road tribute album McLemore Avenue 155 peaked at number 76 on the Billboard Hot 100 in August 1970 156 The R amp B groups the O Jays 1 and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles also covered it as did easy listening stars such as Bert Kaempfert and Liberace 139 Fulfilling Harrison s hopes Ray Charles issued a version on his 1971 album Volcanic Action of My Soul 130 Referring to the song s adoption by easy listening artists Harrison later said When even Liberace covered it in 1970 you know that it s one of them that ends up in an elevator 11 157 Harrison attributed its popularity among other artists to the easily mastered five note melody Du Noyer partly refutes this explanation saying that it was equally a vehicle for the most advanced vocalists such as Peggy Lee along with Sinatra and Bassey 11 At the time I wasn t particularly thrilled that Frank Sinatra did Something I was more interested when Smokey Robinson did it and when James Brown did it But I m very pleased now whoever s done it I realise that the sign of a good song is when it has lots of cover versions 55 George Harrison 2000 Something was one of the very few Beatles songs that Elvis Presley chose to play 158 Lewisohn highlights his interpretation among the dozens of high profile covers 5 Presley performed it on his 1973 Aloha from Hawaii TV special the recording from which appeared on the accompanying bestselling album 159 A version from Presley s August 1970 Las Vegas concert season subsequently appeared on the box sets Walk a Mile in My Shoes The Essential 70s Masters 1995 160 and Live in Las Vegas 2001 161 In 1974 a recording by Johnny Rodriguez reached number 6 on Billboard s Hot Country Singles chart 162 and number 85 on the Hot 100 163 In Canada Rodriguez s single peaked at number 11 on the RPM country chart 164 By 1972 over 150 artists had recorded Something 165 166 In his 1996 Harrison biography The Quiet One Alan Clayson said the song had attracted nearly 200 cover versions 139 In 1972 Harrison told music journalist Mike Hennessey that the Robinson and Cocker versions were among his favourites 165 In later interviews he said that the best cover version was a recording by James Brown 157 167 in which the singer declares I got to believe in something over the main riff 139 Harrison commented that the recording was relatively obscure in Brown s catalogue It was one of his B sides I have it on my jukebox at home It s absolutely brilliant 168 Harrison tributes Edit Bruce Springsteen opened his first show after Harrison s death on 29 November 2001 by playing Something followed by a rendition of Harrison s solo hit My Sweet Lord 169 Elton John gave a solo performance of the song at New York s Carnegie Hall in April 2002 as part of a one hour Harrison tribute during the eleventh annual Rainforest Foundation concert 170 In honour of Harrison s fondness for the instrument Paul McCartney played a ukulele rendition of Something throughout his 2002 03 world tour 171 and included the track on his Back in the U S and Back in the World live albums 172 At the Concert for George held at London s Royal Albert Hall on 29 November 2002 173 he and Eric Clapton performed a version that began with McCartney alone on ukulele then reverted to the familiar rock arrangement with Clapton taking over as lead singer and backing from Starr Preston and others 174 Following its appearance in David Leland s film Concert for George 2003 and on the accompanying live album this performance of Something was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals 175 Bob Dylan also played the song live during his November 2002 concerts as a tribute to Harrison 176 177 McCartney continued to perform Something adopting the Concert for George mix of ukulele and rock backing 178 A version with this musical arrangement was included on his 2009 album Good Evening New York City 179 Live performances by Harrison EditHarrison played Something at the two Concert for Bangladesh shows held at Madison Square Garden in New York on 1 August 1971 180 His first live performance as a solo artist he was backed by a large band that included Starr Preston Clapton and Leon Russell 181 182 The version used on the live album and in the 1972 concert film was taken from the evening show that day when Harrison played it as the final song before returning to perform Bangla Desh as an encore 183 Harrison included Something in all of his subsequent and rare full length concert appearances 184 For his 1974 North American tour with Ravi Shankar he had been reluctant to feature any material from the Beatles catalogue 185 but at the urging of Shankar and Preston during rehearsals he added Something to the setlist 186 To the disappointment of many fans he chose to alter some of the song s lyrics such as changing the first line to If there s something in the way remove it 187 Further distancing himself from the Beatles legacy Harrison told journalists at the start of the tour that he would join a group with Lennon any day but rejected the idea of working again with McCartney since he preferred Willie Weeks as a bassist 188 MacDonald comments that this statement was likely in reference to McCartney s too fussily extemporised bass part on the Beatles 1969 recording 10 With Boyd having left Harrison for Clapton earlier in 1974 189 Larry Sloman of Rolling Stone described the reworked Something as a moving diary of his love life 190 A version from Harrison s December 1991 tour of Japan with Clapton Harrison s only other tour as a solo artist 191 appears on the Live in Japan double album 1992 192 Inglis writes of the track having extra poignancy by this time in that the woman for whom it was written had been married to and divorced from Harrison and Clapton in turn 193 Inglis adds It is not a new interpretation of the song but it does suggest a new perspective in which words and music are used by two close friends to reflect on the lives they have led 194 Personnel EditAccording to Walter Everett 52 Bruce Spizer 195 and Kenneth Womack 196 The Beatles George Harrison lead vocal lead and rhythm guitars John Lennon piano Paul McCartney bass guitar backing vocal Ringo Starr drumsAdditional musicians Billy Preston Hammond organ George Martin string arrangement Unidentified session musicians twelve violins four violas four cellos string bassCharts and certifications EditBeatles version Edit Chart 1969 1970 PeakpositionAustralian Go Set National Top 40 Singles 197 1Austrian Singles Chart 198 11Canadian RPM 100 Singles 199 1Finnish Suomen Virallinen Lista 200 12Irish Singles Chart 201 3New Zealand Listener Chart 80 1Norwegian VG lista Singles 202 2Swedish Kvallstoppen Chart 203 5Swedish Tio i Topp Chart 204 4UK Singles Chart 106 4US Billboard Hot 100 205 1US Billboard Easy Listening 206 17US Cash Box Top 100 205 2West German Musikmarkt Hit Parade 207 1Chart 2015 PeakpositionSweden Heatseeker Sverigetopplistan 208 11Chart 2019 PeakpositionUS Hot Rock amp Alternative Songs Billboard 209 12Shirley Bassey version Edit Chart 1970 71 PeakpositionAustralian Go Set National Top 60 Singles 210 47Austrian Singles Chart 211 19Belgian Ultratop Singles Chart 212 11Dutch MegaChart Singles 142 10French SNEP Singles Chart 213 34Irish Singles Chart 214 13UK Singles Chart 141 4US Billboard Hot 100 143 55US Billboard Easy Listening 143 6West German Media Control Singles Chart 142 40 Certifications Beatles version Edit Region Certification Certified units salesUnited Kingdom BPI 215 Gold 400 000 United States RIAA 113 2 Platinum 2 000 000 Shipments figures based on certification alone Sales streaming figures based on certification alone Notes Edit The Anthology 3 track omits a piano overdub that was present on the acetate from Harrison s birthday session 50 51 Lennon later reprised the piano chords from the discarded coda in his 1970 song Remember 64 65 Music critic Richie Unterberger describes this coda as unclassifiably strange and at odds in melody mood and time signature with Harrison s composition 63 The version of Something with the piano led jam was one of several tracks considered but passed over for inclusion on the three Anthology albums 66 Allan Steckler Klein s colleague dismissed another claim made by Beatles biographers that Klein was merely attempting to win Harrison s support Steckler said Klein believed in George s talent and wanted to enhance his reputation as a songwriter 76 Additionally Something is placed again at number 30 representing the song s performance before the November 1969 Hot 100 rule change 114 Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters named their 1995 song Oh George after Harrison 126 and based his guitar solo on Harrison s playing on Something 127 Harrison recalled that when he appeared with Michael Jackson on a BBC radio show in 1979 151 the show s host referred to Something and Jackson said surprised Oh you wrote that I thought it was a Lennon McCartney 11 References Edit a b c d Unterberger Richie The Beatles Something AllMusic Archived from the original on 21 February 2012 Retrieved 18 February 2015 Ursula Dawn Goldsmith Melissa 2019 Listen to Classic Rock Exploring a Musical Genre ABC CLIO p 32 ISBN 9781440865794 Retrieved 21 October 2022 Perone 2012 p 211 Abbey Road marked the full emergence of George Harrison as a songwriter of equal stature as Paul McCartney and John Lennon Lavezzoli 2006 p 185 Harrison would finally achieve equal songwriting status alongside Lennon and McCartney with his two classic contributions to the final Beatles LP Abbey Road Weber 2016 p 82 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 a b c d e f g h i j k Mark Lewisohn Something Else in Mojo Special Limited Edition p 118 Harrison 2002 p 152 a b c Sold on Song Top 100 Something BBC Radio 2 April 2005 Archived from the original on 6 January 2016 Retrieved 18 February 2015 Clayson 2003 p 250 Womack 2014 p 851 a b c d MacDonald 1998 p 306 a b c d e f g h i j Du Noyer Paul January 2002 George Harrison s Uncertain Something Mojo Archived from the original on 26 May 2013 Retrieved 29 November 2012 The Editors of Rolling Stone 2002 p 177 Clayson 2003 pp 250 51 271 Welch Chris 1 December 2001 George Harrison 1943 2001 The Guardian Available at Rock s Backpages Archived 2 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine subscription required Boyd 2007 p 117 Schaffner 1978 p 115 Allison 2006 p 155 Greene 2006 p 142 The Editors of Rolling Stone 2002 p 132 Clayson 2003 p 251 283 Everett 1999 pp 248 249 a b Pollack Alan W 1999 Notes on Something soundscapes info Archived from the original on 21 February 2015 Retrieved 20 February 2015 MacDonald 1998 pp 306 452 a b c Leng 2006 p 41 a b c Inglis 2010 p 15 a b Harrison 2002 p 154 MacDonald 1998 p 278 Leng 2006 pp 55 56 Castleman amp Podrazik 1976 pp 75 77 Miles 2001 pp 312 313 Martin O Gorman Film on Four in Mojo Special Limited Edition p 73 Leng 2006 p 39 a b The Editors of Rolling Stone 2002 p 38 Sulpy amp Schweighardt 1997 pp 1 2 292 93 Sulpy amp Schweighardt 1997 pp 291 92 Martin O Gorman Film on Four in Mojo Special Limited Edition pp 70 71 Hertsgaard 1996 p 119 Unterberger 2006 p 259 Sulpy amp Schweighardt 1997 pp 291 92 330 a b Sulpy amp Schweighardt 1997 pp 292 93 Spizer 2005 p 220 a b Hertsgaard 1996 p 283 Miles 2001 p 335 Winn 2009 pp 264 65 Huntley 2006 pp 18 19 MacDonald 1998 p 302 Mark Lewisohn liner notes in booklet accompanying the Beatles Anthology 3 CD Apple Records 1996 produced by George Martin p 37 Unterberger 2006 pp 264 65 Spizer 2005 p 225 Winn 2009 p 264 Unterberger 2006 p 265 a b c d e f g h Everett 1999 p 249 Clayson 2003 p 251 Ken Scott in George Harrison Living in the Material World DVD Village Roadshow 2011 Directed by Martin Scorsese produced by Olivia Harrison Nigel Sinclair Martin Scorsese Disc 2 event occurs between 6 26 and 6 57 a b c d The Beatles 2000 p 340 Hertsgaard 1996 pp 173 294 Harper Simon 12 November 2009 Classic Album The Beatles Abbey Road Clash Archived from the original on 25 February 2015 Retrieved 25 February 2015 Inglis 2010 pp 15 16 a b c The Editors of Rolling Stone 2002 p 178 a b c Womack 2014 p 852 MacDonald 1998 p 311 Lewisohn 2005 p 177 a b Unterberger 2006 p 269 Spizer 2003 p 58 MacDonald 1998 p 306fn Badman 2001 p 542 Winn 2009 p 315 Leng 2006 p 42 Miles 2001 p 354 a b Castleman amp Podrazik 1976 p 81 The Editors of Rolling Stone 2002 pp 177 78 201 Sheff 2010 p 166 Lewisohn 2005 pp 193 200 Miles 2001 p 355 Lewisohn 2005 p 193 Spizer 2003 p 59 Adrian Thrills Ten Years After George in Hunt p 22 Clerk Carol February 2002 George Harrison Uncut Available at Rock s Backpages Archived 15 December 2014 at the Wayback Machine subscription required Schaffner 1978 pp 115 140 142 a b c Sullivan 2013 p 563 Ingham 2006 p 127 a b Winn 2009 p 335 a b Kozinn Allan 24 March 2008 Neil Aspinall Beatles Aide Dies at 66 The New York Times Archived from the original on 6 April 2014 Retrieved 15 February 2012 Lewis Randy 9 October 2015 First Impression The Beatles 1 1 delivers something new Los Angeles Times Archived from the original on 12 February 2019 Retrieved 12 February 2019 Rowe Matt 18 September 2015 The Beatles 1 To Be Reissued With New Audio Remixes And Videos The Morton Report Archived from the original on 29 December 2015 Retrieved 9 January 2016 Sheffield Rob 6 November 2015 The Beatles New 1 Video Collection The 10 Fabbest Moments rollingstone com Archived from the original on 16 March 2017 Retrieved 9 June 2017 Gaar Gillian G 10 November 2015 The Beatles 1 Review Paste Archived from the original on 28 September 2018 Retrieved 12 February 2018 Schaffner 1978 p 124 Mendelsohn John 15 November 1969 The Beatles Abbey Road Rolling Stone Archived from the original on 21 April 2014 Retrieved 23 February 2015 Sander Ellen 25 October 1969 The Beatles Abbey Road Saturday Review p 69 Schaffner 1978 pp 123 24 Womack 2019 p 1 Goddard Lon 27 September 1969 The Beatles Abbey Road Apple Stereo PCS 7088 Record Mirror Available at Rock s Backpages Archived 25 January 2019 at the Wayback Machine subscription required Johnson Derek 1 November 1969 Singer Harrison a Winner NME p 8 Sutherland Steve ed 2003 NME Originals Lennon London IPC Ignite p 67 Hartley Keef 1 November 1969 Blind Date Melody Maker p 20 Clayson 2003 p 284 Castleman amp Podrazik 1976 p 332 Schaffner 1978 p 133 Billboard Hot 100 for week ending November 29 1969 Billboard 29 November 1969 p 90 Mapes Jillian 5 February 2014 George Harrison s 10 Biggest Billboard Hits billboard com Archived from the original on 24 February 2015 Retrieved 23 February 2015 Castleman amp Podrazik 1976 p 351 Today in Rock The Beatles hit Number One with Come Together Something Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum Archived from the original on 2 April 2015 Retrieved 28 February 2015 Spizer 2003 p 57 Hoffmann 1983 pp 32 34 a b The Beatles Official Charts Company Archived from the original on 12 May 2016 Retrieved 23 February 2015 MacDonald 1998 p 201 Castleman amp Podrazik 1976 pp 123 24 Spizer 2003 p 232 Badman 2001 p 197 Ingham 2006 pp 137 38 Womack 2014 pp 94 95 582 a b American single certifications The Beatles Something Recording Industry Association of America Retrieved 14 May 2016 a b Billboard Staff 7 February 2014 The Beatles 50 Biggest Billboard Hits billboard com Archived from the 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485 Woffinden 1981 p 83 The Editors of Rolling Stone 2002 p 128 Lavezzoli 2006 pp 195 96 Doggett 2011 pp 224 25 Tillery 2011 p 94 Leng 2006 p 165 Simmons Michael November 2011 Cry for a Shadow Mojo p 86 Erlewine Stephen Thomas George Harrison Live in Japan AllMusic Archived from the original on 4 April 2015 Retrieved 15 May 2015 Inglis 2010 p 109 Inglis 2010 p 110 Spizer 2003 pp 58 59 Womack 2019 p 174 Go Set Australian Charts 20 December 1969 poparchives com au Archived from the original on 28 March 2015 Retrieved 23 February 2015 Discography The Beatles austriancharts at Archived from the original on 22 March 2015 Retrieved 23 February 2015 RPM Top Singles Volume 12 No 15 November 29 1969 Library and Archives Canada Archived from the original on 23 February 2015 Retrieved 23 February 2015 Nyman Jake 2005 Suomi soi 4 Suuri suomalainen listakirja in Finnish 1st ed Helsinki Tammi ISBN 951 31 2503 3 Search by Artist gt The Beatles irishcharts ie Archived from the original on 21 July 2011 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Diary Volume 2 After the Break Up 1970 2001 London Omnibus Press ISBN 978 0 7119 8307 6 The Beatles 2000 The Beatles Anthology San Francisco CA Chronicle Books ISBN 0 8118 2684 8 Boyd Pattie with Junor Penny 2007 Wonderful Today The Autobiography London Headline Review ISBN 978 0 7553 1646 5 Castleman Harry Podrazik Walter J 1976 All Together Now The First Complete Beatles Discography 1961 1975 New York NY Ballantine Books ISBN 0 345 25680 8 Clayson Alan 2003 George Harrison London Sanctuary ISBN 1 86074 489 3 Doggett Peter 2011 You Never Give Me Your Money The Beatles After the Breakup New York NY It Books ISBN 978 0 06 177418 8 The Editors of Rolling Stone 2002 Harrison New York NY Rolling Stone Press ISBN 978 0 7432 3581 5 Everett Walter 1999 The Beatles as Musicians RevolverThrough the Anthology New York NY Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 509553 7 Greene Joshua M 2006 Here Comes the Sun The Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison Hoboken NJ John Wiley amp Sons ISBN 978 0 470 12780 3 Harrison George 2002 1980 I Me Mine San Francisco CA Chronicle Books ISBN 978 0 8118 5900 4 Harry Bill 2003 The George Harrison Encyclopedia London Virgin Books ISBN 978 0 7535 0822 0 Hertsgaard Mark 1996 A Day in the Life The Music and Artistry of the Beatles London Pan Books ISBN 0 330 33891 9 Hoffmann Frank 1983 The Cash Box Singles Charts 1950 1981 Metuchen NJ The Scarecrow Press ISBN 978 0 8108 1595 7 Hunt Chris ed 2005 NME Originals Beatles The Solo Years 1970 1980 London IPC Ignite Huntley Elliot J 2006 Mystical One George Harrison After the Break up of the Beatles Toronto ON Guernica Editions ISBN 978 1 55071 197 4 Ingham Chris 2006 The Rough Guide to the Beatles London Rough Guides Penguin ISBN 978 1 84836 525 4 Inglis Ian 2010 The Words and Music of George Harrison Santa Barbara CA Praeger ISBN 978 0 313 37532 3 Lavezzoli Peter 2006 The Dawn of Indian Music in the West New York NY Continuum ISBN 0 8264 2819 3 Leng Simon 2006 While My Guitar Gently Weeps The Music 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684 81044 1 Schaffner Nicholas 1978 The Beatles Forever New York NY McGraw Hill ISBN 0 07 055087 5 Sheff David 2010 1981 All We Are Saying The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono London Macmillan ISBN 978 1 4299 5808 0 Simpson Paul 2004 The Rough Guide to Elvis London Rough Guides ISBN 1 84353 417 7 Sounes Howard 2010 Fab An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney London HarperCollins ISBN 978 0 00 723705 0 Spizer Bruce 2003 The Beatles on Apple Records New Orleans LA 498 Productions ISBN 0 9662649 4 0 Spizer Bruce 2005 The Beatles Solo on Apple Records New Orleans LA 498 Productions ISBN 0 9662649 5 9 Sullivan Steve 2013 Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings Volume 2 Lanham MD Scarecrow Press ISBN 978 0 8108 8296 6 Sulpy Doug Schweighardt Ray 1997 Get Back The Unauthorized Chronicle of The Beatles Let It Be Disaster New York NY St Martin s Griffin ISBN 0 312 19981 3 Tillery Gary 2011 Working Class Mystic A Spiritual Biography of George Harrison Wheaton IL Quest Books ISBN 978 0 8356 0900 5 Unterberger Richie 2006 The Unreleased Beatles Music amp Film San Francisco CA Backbeat Books ISBN 978 0 87930 892 6 Weber Erin Torkelson 2016 The Beatles and the Historians An Analysis of Writings About the Fab Four Jefferson NC McFarland ISBN 978 1 4766 6266 4 Winn John C 2009 That Magic Feeling The Beatles Recorded Legacy Volume Two 1966 1970 New York NY Three Rivers Press ISBN 978 0 307 45239 9 Woffinden Bob 1981 The Beatles Apart London Proteus ISBN 0 906071 89 5 Womack Kenneth 2006 2002 Ten Great Beatles Moments In Skinner Sawyers June ed Read the Beatles Classic and New Writings on the Beatles Their Legacy and Why They Still Matter London Penguin ISBN 978 0 14 303732 3 Womack Kenneth 2014 The Beatles Encyclopedia Everything Fab Four Santa Barbara CA ABC CLIO ISBN 978 0 313 39171 2 Womack Kenneth 2019 Solid State The Story ofAbbey Roadand the End of the Beatles Ithaca NY Cornell University Press ISBN 978 1 5017 4685 7 Further reading EditAspden Peter 23 September 2019 Something Sinatra called it the greatest love song of the past 50 years ft com Retrieved 24 November 2020 External links Edit Wikiquote has quotations related to Abbey Road Full lyrics for the song at the Beatles official website Something singles at Discogs Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Something Beatles song amp oldid 1132378756, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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