Today's album
All Things Must Pass
George Harrison
After years of having songs passed over by the Beatles, George Harrison finally takes center stage and reveals just how badly his own band underestimated him.
02
What Shaped This Album
The Beatles break up with John Lennon and Paul McCartney still regarded as the band’s great songwriters. George Harrison leaves carrying years of material and the lingering reputation of the quiet member who occasionally gets a turn. Then he opens the vault.
Songs the Beatles passed over now sit beside spiritual searching, resentment and relief. Harrison records enough music for a triple album. The scale feels less like indulgence than evidence. His bandmates had mistaken limited opportunity for limited talent.
03
The Album Title,Dissected
All Things Must Pass
The phrase comes from a song Harrison writes before the Beatles break up, so its idea of impermanence begins as spiritual practice rather than a victory speech. Success passes. Pain passes. Bands pass.
He finally receives all the space he wanted, then uses it to argue that no achievement, including this one, can last. Freedom and grief become inseparable.
04
What to Listen For
The slide guitar
Harrison’s singing slide lines rarely show off; they hover around the melody like a second, wordless voice.
The density
Phil Spector’s production stacks instruments into a haze. Try listening through the mass for the small acoustic figures holding the songs together.
The repeated phrases
Titles and refrains often return like meditations. Simple language gaining weight through repetition rather than explanation.
The release of the chorus
Many songs begin conversationally and then open into large communal choruses, mirroring the album’s movement from containment to expression.
05
Why It Matters Today
When the Beatles end, it looks like the worst thing that could happen to George Harrison. Instead, it gives him room to mourn what is gone, release years of withheld songs and imagine a life beyond the role he had been assigned. All Things Must Pass treats grief as motion: something to feel fully, carry for a while and eventually release.
That is the album’s lasting relevance. We still cling to jobs, relationships, identities and versions of ourselves long after they stop fitting because losing them can feel like losing everything. All Things Must Pass offers a harder kind of comfort: nothing lasts forever, but neither does pain. The same truth that makes loss frightening can also make survival possible.