‘Something’: George Harrison on the nicest tune he ever wrote
There’s a somewhat enigmatic energy to the discussion around George Harrison‘s songwriting reputation. Legendary in his own right but eternally linked to the work of his Liverpudlian counterparts, Lennon and McCartney. A point within which lives so much irony: critics constantly bemoan the comparison of his work to his bandmates, yet can’t help but mention their names when trying to praise Harrison in his own right. Essentially, exactly what I am doing right now.
But through the frustration of his middle-child-like treatment, he grew a masterful song that exists not just as one of Harrison’s finest but one many regards as The Beatles’ best. In fact, it’s widely considered one of the greatest love songs of all time, full stop.
“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.” said, George Martin, the legendary producer who steered The Beatles ship throughout their career.
He continued, “I think the trouble with George was that he was never treated on the same level as having the same quality of songwriting, by anyone – by John, by Paul or by me.” He added, “I’m as guilty in that respect. I was the guy who used to say: ‘If he’s got a song, we’ll let him have it on the album’ – very condescendingly. I know he must have felt really bad about that. Gradually he kept persevering, and his songs did get better – until eventually, they got extremely good. ‘Something’ is a wonderful song.”
Barefaced in its romanticism but deceptive in its sonic delivery, it was a more vulnerable take on relationships that asked questions about growing love. Continued proclamations of ‘I don’t know / I don’t know’ are an unconventional way of exercising your deepest inhibitions, but its success spoke to the skilful nuance of Harrison as a songwriter.
And it was a song that garnered widespread acclaim among fellow musicians. In fact, legendary crooner and gatekeeper of all things romantic, Frank Sinatra once described the song as, “one of the best love songs to have been written, I believe, in 50 or 100 years, and it never says ‘I love you’ in the song, but it really is one of the finest.”
It’s a song about letting go and submitting yourself to the journey, rather than showering your subject in declarations too unrealistic to fulfil. And when Harrison laid those sentiments on top of a sultry verse and anthemic chorus, it revealed a completely new way of approaching love songs in contemporary music. But while both I and countless critics try to understand the essence of this song’s quality, Harrison, rather reductively, described it as, “nice”, he added “it’s probably the nicest melody tune that I’ve written”.
Harrison added context to the tune’s genesis, stating: “When I wrote it I imagined somebody like Ray Charles doing it. You know that’s the feel I imagined. But because I’m not Ray Charles, I’m sort of much more limited in what I can do, then it came out like this”.
It’s interesting that his perception of a song that became an instant Beatles classic and dragged him out of the Lennon and McCartney-shaped shadow still downplays his own delivery in comparison to another artist. Such is the impact of Harrison’s genius in this song that, it’s hard to picture anyone else playing it. Even Ray Charles, an icon and pioneer of blues, is but a scratchy silhouette in the memory of anyone who tries to reimagine the delivery of ‘Something’.
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