Something

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Something
The Beatles
publication 26th September 1969
length 3 min 3 s
Genre (s) Soft rock , pop rock , pop
Author (s) Harrison
album Abbey Road
Cover version
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Something ( English Something ) is a song by the British band The Beatles , which was released in 1969 on the album Abbey Road and also as a single . The title was written and sung by George Harrison .

production

George Harrison , 1974

The title was written by George Harrison in 1968, but too late to be recorded for the album The Beatles , the so-called White Album . The piece was written during a break during the recording of this album. Harrison recalled in his autobiography I, Me, Mine :

Something was written on the piano while we were making the White album . I had a break while Paul was doing some overdubbing so I went in an empty studio and began to write. That's really all there is to it, except the middle took some time to sort it out!

“ Something was written while we were working on the White Album . I was taking a break because Paul was overdubbing , so I went to a free studio and started composing. That is actually all there is to say about it; one could also mention that it took some time to get the middle section! "

- George Harrison, 1980

Harrison decided to offer the song to Joe Cocker , who recorded it in his own version in early 1969. Cocker's version did not appear until November 1969, after the release of the album Abbey Road and the Beatles single.

On February 25, 1969 - his 26th birthday - Harrison went to Abbey Road Studios to record demo versions of three of his compositions: Old Brown Shoe , All Things Must Pass and Something . In addition to Harrison's vocals, the recording of the song only contains the electric guitar he played . In this early form the song had one more, later discarded stanza:

"You know I love that woman of mine
and I need her all of the time ...
and you know what I'm telling to you
that woman, that woman don't make me blue."

- Quoted from George Harrison : I, Me, Mine. 1980, p. 153

The actual recordings for this piece only began on April 16, 1969, although initially they were limited to the rhythm track. Paul McCartney played a bass track, Ringo Starr a drum track, Harrison a guitar track and George Martin contributed the piano. John Lennon was present but did not record an instrument. On May 2, 1969, the Beatles continued work on Something . This time Billy Preston , who played the piano, was also involved in the recordings . In this recording session a version of the song was created that was 7:48 minutes long, which was due to a long, instrumental part after the end of the song. This ending was cut out at the end in order to shorten the song to a length of around three minutes. On May 5th, the first vocal recordings for Something were made in London's Olympic Studios , but on July 11th they were replaced by a new vocal track by Harrison. The final recordings took place on August 15, 1969, with the orchestral string accompaniment composed by George Martin and Harrison's guitar solo.

Publications

On September 26, 1969, the song was released on the album Abbey Road and on October 31, 1969 as a single (together with Come Together as a double A-side ). It is the only Beatles single with a composition by George Harrison on the A side. In Great Britain the single reached number 4 on the singles charts, in the USA - where both sides were counted separately - number 3 (Something) and number 1 (Come Together) . In 1996 a simple demo version of the piece appeared in part three of the Anthology series.

An alternative mix of the original version was released in November 2006 on the album Love . There, at the end of the song, a fragment of the Harrison composition Blue Jay Way was mixed, which in turn was underlaid with the Lennon composition Nowhere Man .

Cover versions (selection)

With more than 100 cover versions , Something is George Harrison's most successful composition. In his opinion, the most successful cover version comes from James Brown . There are other covers by Elvis Presley , Frank Sinatra , The O'Jays , Ray Charles and others. Sinatra's version in particular became known because he played it at almost all of his concerts. However, Sinatra was initially unaware of the song's authorship, as he repeatedly called Something the best Lennon / McCartney composition.

Prince didn't release a cover version, but named Something as one of 55 songs that inspired him musically.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vegas Blog of the LA Times, in the Internet archive ( Memento from September 30, 2011 in the Internet Archive )