Beatle Song Profiles: Abbey Road

Each of the 17 songs from Abbey Road are “profiled” in this volume of Beatle Song Profiles.

Beatle Song Profiles are concise commentaries on every Beatle song. The song profiles describe the song’s origins and inspiration, what The Beatles themselves said about it, what was unique about the music and/or production of the arrangement or vocals, and the deeper meaning of the lyrics.

Beatle Song Profiles is a unique educational tool to enable readers to learn about  every song on all 12 albums The Beatles recorded. 

                                  Sample song profile from Abbey Road

                                                                   Something

The original intent of Something was as a devotion to Lord Krishna as George was a student of “Krishna Consciousness” when he wrote it. His only comment on the track was:

“They had blessed me with a couple of B sides in the past. But this is the first time I’ve had an A side. Big deal!”

Engineer Geoff Emerick remembers the smugness on the face of George when he first presented the track to the band. Emerick recollects how he had the guts to tell Paul how to play the bass part of the song and that he wanted it to be performed in a simplified manner.

Emerick writes:

“It was a first in all my years of working with the Beatles: George had never dared to tell Paul what to do. For the first time, John and Paul knew that George had risen to their level.”

Jonathan Gould described Something as a duet between Harrison’s voice and his own lead guitar. Through it gives the impression of being highly melodic, the tune in the verse is actually very narrow, moving in a range of five notes, which enables Harrison to sing it with great relaxation and force.

George’s guitar solo is in counterpoint with McCartney’s jazzy, melodic bass. Yet the bass line somehow manages to still keep out of the way of the melody and doesn’t overtake it. Ringo comes up with an immovable backbeat and varied tom-tom fills.

George supplies the entire vocal arrangement in a neat pattern of alternating sections of single tracking, double tracking at the unison, as well as singing in harmony with himself. The restrained string orchestra adds a pleasantly lush finish to the arrangement. Because the song is a ballad, it’s slow enough to create large spaces the musicians to fill in which gives the track a feel of aesthetic simplicity.

The overriding theme of the track is doubt and uncertainty. The composition can be interpreted as an internal struggle within an individual who doesn’t love a woman- but lusts her. She entices him and essentially manipulates him. She knows he has nowhere else to go and that is leverage for keeping him in this relationship.

Despite its elusive quality, “Something” stands as a supreme, affirmation of love, the attraction of the “Other.” Of the reality of that something that connects one with another in the universe

The man really loves this woman that he is in a relationship with. But there is something wrong in it and he’s trying to decide whether he should end it and if by doing that- then if this will be the end of his problem. He is torn between his deep love for her the knowledge that his love for her can’t grow any more.