George Harrison Songs

George Harrison was the ‘quiet’ Beatle, the one whose work was often over-shadowed by that of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

From the age of sixteen, George Harrison joined Lennon and McCartney in the Liverpool group known as the Quarry Men, as lead guitarist and occasional songwriter. 

George had a lyrical style and made every note he played count.  In the early years, every album of The Beatles featured at least one Harrison song including early offerings: Love You Too, Do You Want to Know a Secret and the cheeky hit Taxman – featuring on the Revolver album in 1966. Taxman was the only George Harrison song that opened a Beatles album.

As George Harrison matured he became more experimental in his choice of instruments. The Indian sitar is a signature sound George brought to the group.

Once George emerged from under the shadow of master song-writers Lennon and McCartney, he created classics such as While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Here Comes The Sun.

After the Beatles decided to no longer tour together, Harrison’s songwriting improved. He was never a strong singer in the group, but his vocals have always been distinctive and easily detected on many Beatles tracks.  Many people acclaim the George Harrison song Something as his best.

After the song Yesterday, Something is the second most covered Beatles’ song ever.  It is also the only Beatles song solely written and sung by George Harrison to become a number one hit. His second number one hit was For You Blue, the B side to the Beatles hit The Long and Winding Road.

For the Sgt. Pepper album, George Harrison again experimented musically, with the song Within You Without You, and later he featured the Indian Sitar and Tambura on the song Love You Too on the Beatles album Revolver.

The release of the Beatles album Yellow Submarine in 1969, providing the musical accompaniment to the Beatles animated psychedelic movie by the same name, featured six George Harrison songs. 

George Harrison also wrote It’s All Too Much, recorded on the “Magical Mystery Tour” and perhaps it is when the band was at its most inventive and testing the boundaries of the Beatles musical style.

Relations among the band members continued to be strained during the recording of the Beatles album Abbey Road, but on that final album, George Harrison song While My Guitar Gently Weeps emerged as a classis and perhaps helped secure his place as a solo artist after the group disbanded.

After the breakup in 1970, Harrison continued to write and went on to create two solo albums, mostly instrumental, both on his own and with legendary record producer Phil Spector.  It was then that another George Harrison song was released, which achieved infamy but is widely acknowledged as a classic, My Sweet Lord was released and became the first solo post-Beatles recording from one of the Fab Four.  The release of this George Harrison song gave rise to plagiarism litigation, due to what was considered to be a very close resemblance to ‘The Chiffons’ 1962 hit He’s So Fine.

The release of George Harrison album was followed up with a revolutionary idea – a rock concert promoted as a major charity event – for the impoverished and war torn state of Bangladesh. Surely it was George Harrisons Bangladesh concert that gave rise to a number of preceding ‘charity concerts’ such as Live Aid etc.

Other George Harrison songs of the same period include Give Me Love,(Give Me Peace on Earth) and What Is Life.

By 1988, George co-founded The Traveling Wilburys, a super-group made up of legendary performers with Harrison at the helm. He went on to collaborate on a number of songs with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Eric Clapton, earning himself acclamation as one of the greatest guitarists of all time by music industry critics.

There are around 220+ George Harrison songs credited to the late, great George Harrison.