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Something
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"Something" is a single released by The Beatles in 1969, and featured on the album Abbey Road. "Something" was the first song written by George Harrison to appear on the A-side of a Beatles single, sharing top billing on the double A-side single with "Come Together" in the United Kingdom. It was one of the first Beatles singles to contain tracks already available on a long playing (LP) album, with both "Something" and "Come Together" having appeared on Abbey Road. "Something" was the only Harrison composition to top the American charts while he was a Beatle.
Although John Lennon and Paul McCartney — the two principal songwriting members of the band — both praised "Something" as among the best songs Harrison had written, the recording of the song was marked by acrimonious spats. Despite this, the single managed to top the Billboard charts in the United States, and also entered the top 10 in the United Kingdom. After the breakup of The Beatles, the song was covered by many artists including Elvis Presley, Shirley Bassey, Frank Sinatra, James Brown, Julio Iglesias, Smokey Robinson, Joe Cocker becoming the second-most covered Beatles song after "Yesterday."
Writing and recordingDuring the 1968 recording sessions for The Beatles (also referred to as the White Album), Harrison began working on a song that eventually became known as "Something." Initially based on the James Taylor song "Something In The Way She Moves," the song's first lyrics ("Something in the way she moves/Attracts me like no other lover.") were used as filler while the melody was being developed. Indeed, Harrison's song is occasionally mistakenly referred to as "Something In the Way She Moves."
Harrison later said that "I had a break while Paul was doing some overdubbing so I went into an empty studio and began to write. That's really all there is to it, except the middle took some time to sort out. It didn't go on the White Album because we'd already finished all the tracks." A demo recording of the song by Harrison from this period appears on the Beatles Anthology 3 collection, released in 1996.
Many believe that Harrison's inspiration for "Something" was his wife at the time, Pattie Boyd. Boyd confirmed that inspiration in her 2007 autobiography, "Wonderful Tonight" where she wrote: "He told me, in a matter-of-fact way, that he had written it for me." .
Harrison has cited other sources of inspiration. In a 1996 interview he responded to the question of whether the song was about Pattie: "Well no, I didn't (write it about her). I just wrote it, and then somebody put together a video. And what they did was they went out and got some footage of me and Pattie, Paul and Linda, Ringo and Maureen, it was at that time, and John and Yoko and they just made up a little video to go with it. So then, everybody presumed I wrote it about Pattie, but actually, when I wrote it, I was thinking of Ray Charles."
The original intention had been for Harrison to offer the song to Jackie Lomax, as had been done with the previous Harrison composition, "Sour Milk Sea". When this fell through, the song was given to Joe Cocker (who had previously covered The Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends"); his version came out two months before that of The Beatles. During the Get Back recording sessions for what eventually became Let It Be, Harrison considered using "Something", but eventually decided against it due to his fear that insufficient care would be taken in its recording; his earlier suggestion of "Old Brown Shoe" had not gone down well with the band. It was only during the recording sessions for Abbey Road that The Beatles began seriously working on "Something."
The original draft that the Beatles used lasted eight minutes, with John Lennon on the piano towards the end (This was recorded later as Lennon was not present during the first few sessions.) The middle also contained a small counter-melody section in the draft. Both the counter-melody and Lennon's piano piece were cut from the final version. Still, Lennon's piano was not erased totally. Some bits can be heard in the middle eight, in particular the line played downwards the C major scale, i.e. the connection passage to George's guitar solo. The erased parts of Lennon's piano section later became the basis for Lennon's song "Remember."
Release and acclaimAbbey Road was released on 26 September 1969 in the United Kingdom, with the United States' release following on 1 October. It was the first official Beatles release to feature "Something", and performed well, topping the charts in both countries. A few days later on 6 October, "Something" was released as a single in the United States, becoming the first Harrison composition to receive top billing on a Beatles single.
Although it began charting a week after its release on 18 October, doubts began to arise over the possibility of "Something" topping the American charts. It was the prevailing practice at the time to count sales and airplay of the A- and B-sides separately, which allowed for separate chart positions. With "Come Together" rivaling "Something" in popularity, it was hardly certain that either side of the single would reach number one. However, on 29 November, Billboard started factoring the combined performance of both A- and B-sides into their calculations, as one single. The result was that "Come Together/Something" topped the American charts for a week, before eventually falling out of the charts about two months later (on the concurrent Cash Box singles chart, which continued to measure the performance on both sides of a single separately, "Something" peaked at number two while "Come Together" spent three weeks at number one). The single was certified Gold just three weeks after its initial release, but was not heard of again in terms of sales until 1999, when it was declared Platinum.
In the United Kingdom, "Something" came out on 31 October. It was the first Beatles single there to have a Harrison song on the A-side, and it was also the first single also feature songs already available on an album. "Something" first entered the chart on 8 November, eventually peaking at number four, before falling out of the charts three months after its initial release. In the UK Shirley Bassey's version also reached #4.
Although Harrison himself had been dismissive of the song—he later said that he "put it on ice for about six months because I thought 'that's too easy'"—Lennon and McCartney both stated that they held "Something" in high regard. Lennon said "I think that's about the best track on the album, actually", while McCartney said "For me I think it's the best he's written." Both had largely ignored Harrison's compositions prior to "Something", with their own songs taking much of the limelight. Lennon later explained:
Despite this, things were not going well for the band. The recording of Abbey Road had been marked by numerous arguments among the band members, and their last album — Let It Be — comprised abandoned recordings from the Get Back sessions instead of any new work. By the time the promotional video for "Something" was being shot, the individual Beatles had drawn apart; the film consisted of separate clips of each Beatle walking around his home, accompanied by his wife, edited together. Shortly after the release of Let It Be in 1970, The Beatles announced their break-up.
That same year, "Something" received the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. It also began accumulating cover versions from other artists, including Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, The O'Jays, and even Ray Charles, who Harrison originally had in mind as the singer when he wrote "Something". Harrison nevertheless later said that his favourite cover versions were those of James Brown (B-Side of 45 Think ['73]/Something; Polydor PD-14185; 1973) and Smokey Robinson.
Frank Sinatra was particularly impressed with "Something". Calling it "the greatest love song ever written", he sang it hundreds of times at various concerts. However, he once made the comment that "Something" was his all-time favourite Lennon-McCartney song , and frequently introduced it as a Lennon/McCartney composition (the joke being that it was written by Harrison). Harrison did not appear to mind this, and instead borrowed an alteration to the lyric that Sinatra had made. Where the original song was "You stick around now it may show", Sinatra sang "You stick around, Jack, she might show." This change was eagerly adopted by Harrison, who used the same lyrics whenever he performed "Something" as part of his touring repertoire.
"Something" continues to garner accolades from the musical establishment years after its release, with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) website naming it as the 64th-greatest song ever. According to the BBC, "'Something' shows more clearly than any other song in The Beatles canon that there were three great songwriters in the band rather than just two." The Beatles' official website itself said that "Something" "underlined the ascendancy of George Harrison as a major song writing force". In 1999, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) named "Something" as the 17th-most performed song of the 20th century, with five million performances in all. Other Beatles songs on the list were "Yesterday" and "Let It Be", both attributed to Lennon and McCartney.
In 2002, after Harrison's death, McCartney and Eric Clapton performed "Something" at the Concert for George. Their performance was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. McCartney also performed the song using just a ukulele on his "Back in The US" and "Back in the World" tours. The song was also performed as a tribute to Harrison by McCartney in 2008 at the Liverpool Sound Concert, where he performs the song in a similar fashion to that of the Concert for George, starting off with only a ukulele for accompaniment, then after the bridge, being joined by the full band to conclude the song similarly to that of the origanal recording. Bob Dylan likewise played the song live as a tribute to Harrison following his death.
Credits
Cover versions"Something" has been covered by these artists, and others:
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