Something: Encyclopedia II - Something - A runaway hit

Something - A runaway hit

"Something" was well-received. John Lennon declared that "Something" was the best song on Abbey Road, going on to state:

McCartney emphatically echoed Lennon's opinion, saying, "I like George's song 'Something.' For me I think it's the best he's written."

In the ten years following its release, "Something" accumulated 150 cover versions. While recording his own cover version in the 1970s, no less than Frank Sinatra announced that "Something" was "the greatest love song of the last fifty years." He recorded it twice: with a traditionally-arranged version in 1970 and a lushy-arranged (and Harrison-preferred) recording in 1979. However, Sinatra made a gaffe – in his original statement, he mistakenly attributed it to the Lennon / McCartney partnership, which wrote much of the Beatles' material. Sinatra also made an innovation of his own on the song, changing one of its lines to "You stick around, Jack / And she might show" which Harrison loved – in all his future performances of "Something", he used Sinatra's modified lyric instead of his original.

Of the numerous cover versions of "Something", Harrison's personal favourites were those by James Brown and Smokey Robinson.

In 1970, "Something" won the Ivor Novello award for "Best Song Musically & Lyrically", although being overshadowed elsewhere by other Beatles' songs from Let It Be, notably the title track.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "A runaway hit", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki