Most music followers agree: George Harrison was under-appreciated as a songwriter throughout his time with the Beatles. Between 1962 and 1970, the Fab Four launched a bit of over 200 songs, solely a small fraction of which had been penned by Harrison.

It wouldn’t be till the latter portion of the band’s tenure and into the early years of Harrison’s solo profession that his expertise earned extra recognition — 1970’s All Things Must Pass, for instance, was one of the best-selling albums of the ’70s and is persistently cited right now as a landmark singer-songwriter launch. Or you’ll be able to take a look at it this manner: two of the most-streamed Beatles songs ever had been written by Harrison, “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something.”

Appearing on 1969’s Abbey Road, “Something” was Harrison’s very first A-side Beatles single — seven years after the band started releasing music. It was a No. 1 hit within the U.S., in addition to No. 4 within the U.Okay., and nearly instantly, fellow musicians acknowledged its power and beginning protecting the music each stay and on their very own information.

“I realize that the sign of a good song is when it has lots of cover versions,” Harrison would say in The Beatles Anthology. We agree. Below, in no explicit order, are the 10 Best Covers of ‘Something’ by George Harrison.

Frank Sinatra

Frank Sinatra did “Something” his method. He began performing the music stay at his concert events not lengthy after the music was launched, and likewise included it on his 1972 album Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2. “It’s one of the best love songs I believe to be written in 50 or 100 years,” Sinatra stated simply earlier than performing the present on the Concert for Americas within the Dominican Republic in 1982, “and it never says ‘I love you’ in the song, but it really is one of the finest.” The singer was in his mid 60s then — in comparison with Harrison, who was 26 when he laid down the unique demos of the music — lending it a kind of wisened tone.

Joe Cocker

If there may be one one that may be thought of the king of Beatles covers, it could be Joe Cocker, who put his personal soulful spin on a quantity of their songs over time. Harrison really provided “Something” to Cocker first earlier than recording his personal model. Cocker’s rendition got here out the month after the Beatles’ did, on his second album Joe Cocker! (That album additionally contained covers of Bob Dylan’s “Dear Landlord,” Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire” and one other Beatles music from the identical album as “Something,” “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.”)

Booker T. and the M.G.’s

Booker T. Jones of Booker T. & the M.G.’s was hundreds of miles away from the Beatles when Abbey Road was launched. It stopped him in his tracks. (*10*) he maintain the A.V. Club in 2009. “To push the limit like that and reinvent themselves when they had no need to [do] that. They were the top band in the world but they still reinvented themselves. The music was just incredible so I felt I needed to pay tribute to it.” Pay tribute he did within the kind of his personal cowl of “Something.” It appeared on the 1970 album McLemore Avenue, the quilt of which confirmed the band strolling single file throughout a avenue just like the Beatles on Abbey Road.

Elvis Presley

It’s doable that with out Elvis Presley, there might not have been the Beatles. Like quite a few budding musicians, Presley was a major affect on Harrison and his bandmates. “It had an incredible impact on me just because I’d never heard anything like it,” Harrison as soon as recalled. “I mean, coming from Liverpool, we obviously — we didn’t really hear the very early Sun Records. The first record I can remember hearing was probably the big hit by the time it got across the Atlantic. It was ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ – ‘Heartburn Motel’ as Elvis called it.” Things got here full circle when Presley carried out “Something” on his 1973 Aloha From Hawaii TV particular, seen under. A 1970 model was additionally included on Presley’s 1995 field set, Walk a Mile in My Shoes: The Essential ’70s Masters.

James Brown

“The best one I ever heard was [from] James Brown and he did it in 1972,” Harrison defined in a 1988 interview with MuchMusic (by way of Far Out Magazine), “but he did [it] only as the B-side of a re-recorded version of ‘Think,’ which is a very old song of his. So it was only on the B-side. I sent him a postcard and said: ‘You should make it the A-side, it’s a killer! It’s really good.”

Shirley Bassey

“I recorded ‘Something’ after I had seen Peggy Lee perform the song on The Ed Sullivan Show in the States,” Shirley Bassey advised Record Mirror in July of 1970, a few month earlier than she launched an album that not solely included her cowl of “Something,” however was named after it. (Both the music and LP had been Top 5 hits within the U.Okay.) “I thought it was a ‘communication song.’ I’ve always admired the Beatles’ work anyway — at least until they went a little strange — and I think this George Harrison song is just beautiful.”

Smokey Robinson

In a 1974 interview with Sounds, Harrison was requested about which up to date artists he appreciated. “Smokey Robinson,” he replied. “I’m madly in love with Smokey Robinson.” Of course, Harrison’s love of Robinson might be traced again a few years — the Beatles had recorded the Miracles’ “You Really Got a Hold on Me” again in 1963 for his or her second British album, With the Beatles, that includes each Harrison and John Lennon singing the lead concord vocal. (Harrison and Robinson would later change into mates once they each lived in Los Angeles.)

Ray Charles

Sometimes a success arrives within the lap of a songwriter thanks partially to their pondering of another person. In the case of “Something,” Harrison had one explicit singer in thoughts when he sat down on the piano, the instrument on which he wrote the music. “It has probably got a range of five notes, which fits most singers’ needs best,” he defined in The Beatles Anthology. “When I wrote it, in my mind I heard Ray Charles singing it, and he did do it some years later.”

It turned out that Charles’ model wasn’t Harrison’s favourite. “As it happened, the song ended up with over 150 cover versions,” he stated in a 1979 joint interview with none aside from Michael Jackson. “But when Ray Charles did it, I was really disappointed. It was a bit corny, the way he did it.” Still, there’s one thing charming concerning the soul Charles put into this recording.

Sarah Vaughan

This one is a little more on the market than the others, nevertheless it would not be unreasonable to assume Harrison would admire an association departure just like the one offered in Sarah Vaughan’s cowl of “Something.” Vaughan’s model appeared on her 1981 album Songs of the Beatles, and he or she was accompanied on the monitor by the Brazilian singer and musician Marcos Valle. David Paich, David Hungate, and each Jeff and Steve Porcaro of Toto additionally seem on the album.

Norah Jones

Norah Jones has a very particular connection to Harrison. Her father, the Indian sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar, was one of Harrison’s musical idols. Over the years she’s lined a quantity of Beatles (and solo Harrison) songs, and is a good friend of Harrison’s solely son, Dhani, however her 2014 cowl of “Something” is particularly memorable with Jones’ velvety vocal.

Honorable Mention: Paul McCartney

Frankly we’d be remiss if we did not a minimum of give an honorable point out to Harrison’s personal Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney. For years now, McCartney has been paying tribute to his late good friend with stay covers of “Something” that includes the ukulele, one of Harrison’s favourite devices. “Sometimes if you’d go ’round to George’s house, after you’d have dinner, the ukuleles would come out,” McCartney stated when he launched the music on the 2002 Concert for George, held on the one yr anniversary of Harrison’s passing. “And one time not so long ago, we were playing and I said, ‘There’s a song I do on the ukulele.’ I played it for him—[I’ll] play it for you now. It’s a tribute to our beautiful friend.”