The Musician That Inspired George Harrison to Write “Something”

While many people would assume the timeless love song, “Something,” is about George Harrison‘s then-wife Pattie Boyd. However, it wasn’t his wife that originally moved his pen, but another musician. Find out which musician that is, below.

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The Musician That Inspired George Harrison to Write “Something”

Something in the way she moves

Attracts me like no other lover

Something in the way she woos me

I don’t want to leave her now

You know I believe and how

As Paul McCartney once said, sometimes it helps to imagine another artist singing your song. That’s the method Harrison used while writing “Something.” While we’re sure the influence of his wife, Boyd, seeped into his subconscious while writing this ballad, the driving force behind it was Ray Charles.

Harrison once said he imagined Charles singing this song–which no doubt accounts for the song’s soulful melody. Many people associate this song with Boyd because of the accompanying music video, which features clips of the couple.

“I didn’t [write it about Boyd],” Harrison once said. “I just wrote it, and then somebody put together a video. And what they did was they went out and got some footage of me and Pattie, Paul and Linda, Ringo and Maureen, it was at that time, and John and Yoko and they just made up a little video to go with it. So then, everybody presumed I wrote it about Pattie, but actually, when I wrote it, I was thinking of Ray Charles.”

Somewhere in her smile she knows

That I don’t need no other lover

Something in her style that shows me

I don’t want to leave her now

You know I believe and how

Regardless of what inspired Harrison, the end result is a timeless song that remains one of the greatest all time effigies of love. Revisit the track, below.

(Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)