The Beatles – Something

“Something” – Single by the Beatles from the album Abbey Road
A-side “Come Together” (double A-side)
Released 6 October 1969
Recorded 2 May – 15 August 1969
Label Apple
Songwriter George Harrison
Producer George Martin
Charted No.1 in US, No.4 in UK, No.1 in Australia, No.1 in Canada

“Something” is a song by the Beatles, featured on their 1969 album Abbey Road. It was released that same year as a double A-sided single with another track from the album, “Come Together”. “Something” was the first Beatles song written by lead guitarist George Harrison to appear as an A-side, and the only song written by him to top the US charts while he was in the band. The single was also one of the first Beatles singles to contain tracks already available on an LP album.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the band’s principal songwriters, both praised “Something” as one of the best songs Harrison had written, or that the group had to offer.

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.

Harrison had the first line, “Something in the way she moves,” but had trouble coming up with the second. He considered “attracts me like a pomegranate,” before coming up with “attracts me like no other lover.”

Frank Sinatra called this “The greatest love song ever written.” He often performed it in the ’70s, at one point wrongly attributing it to Lennon and McCartney rather than Harrison.