The Beatles had an unparalleled ability to distil romance and love down to its purest sonic form. Their talent for this extended far beyond their primary songwriting duo, beyond the music and lyrics concocted by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and into the pen of George Harrison. Perhaps the most obvious example of his contributions to their love-driven sound was ‘Something’.
Written and released in the band’s final years together, ‘Something’ would be released as a single for the iconic Abbey Road in 1969. Over gentle drums, gorgeous guitar twangs, and subtle strings, Harrison struggles to pin down the reason for his longing for his lover. It’s something in the way she moves and the way she woos him, the way she knows and the things she shows him.
His declarations of love perfectly walk the line between vague and vulnerable, encapsulating the intimacies of his own relationship as well as love as a whole. The song’s universal nature has ensured its longevity, still frequented by lovers over half a century later, but its warmth and sentiment stems from Harrison.
Many thought that the Beatles guitarist penned the song for Patti Boyd, who he had met and fallen in love with on the set of A Hard Day’s Night. An early rejection quickly turned into romance, as the pair embarked upon a relationship that would culminate in marriage in 1966. The pair would stay together until 1977, when Boyd divorced the Beatle.
Somewhere in between, Harrison penned ‘Something’, so it made sense that the subject of his songwriting affections was Boyd. In actuality, he had someone else in mind during the making of the beloved track: Ray Charles. During a conversation with Paul Cashmere, Harrison stated that he didn’t initially write ‘Something’ with Boyd in mind, the association came after.
An accompanying music video for the love song compiled footage of The Beatles and their respective partners, including Boyd. “So then, everybody presumed I wrote it about Patti,” Harrison explained, “but actually, when I wrote it, I was thinking of Ray Charles.”
It’s not that Harrison had fallen in love with the pianist quite like he had with Boyd – Charles wasn’t the lover who was attracting him like no other – but his stunning singing voice did guide the guitarist during the writing of the track. “That’s what I was thinking of,” Harrison explained, “I could hear in my head Ray Charles singing it.”
Harrison took on the lead vocal when the track was recorded for The Beatles, but he would get to live out his dream of hearing Charles take on the track. In 1971, the singer covered ‘Something’, as well as ‘The Long and Winding Road’, on his album Volcanic Action of My Soul. Smooth and soulful, his rendition added a whole new dimension to the song, though Harrison wasn’t entirely pleased with it.
Between countless covers and Harrison’s wholesome original, ‘Something’ has earned its place as one of the greatest love songs of all time. It’s infused with Harrison’s feeling – as well as his love for the iconic soul singer – but it’s also beautifully sweeping in its approach to romance. The simultaneous tentatively and certainty of the feeling contained into three minutes of strums and strings.
