Ranking Every George Harrison Top 40 Song

Even as his early creative peak, George Harrison would typically be given two slots to fill on Beatles albums. That tends to happen when your bandmates are named John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

The Beatles split in 1970 and Harrison quite understandably began his solo career with a backlog of great songs. He came roaring onto the charts: Every single Harrison issued over the first five years of his solo career reached the Billboard Top 40 – and two of them hit No. 1.

He’d add four more Top 40 hits, including another No. 1 hit, before taking a break from music in the early-’80s. Then, as before, Harrison returned with a clutch of great songs in the early ’00s.

How George Harrison Staged a Remarkable Comeback

Harrison would score the most recent solo Beatles U.S. No. 1 song during a period of late-’80s rebirth. He almost cracked the Top 20 twice with two other singles in this same era – and then was halted just outside the U.K. Top 40 with 1990’s “Nobody’s Child” with the Traveling Wilburys.

There were some strange anomalies, too. Harrison scored a hit in his native U.K. with the Traveling Wilburys’ “Handle With Care,” but the single only reached No. 45 on the Billboard Hot 100. Their follow-up single, the then-ubiquitous “End of the Line,” somehow stalled at No. 63 on the main charts – and got no further than No. 52 in the U.K. (Both were No. 2 smash singles on Billboard’s mainstream rock chart.)

As with his former bandmate Lennon, Harrison’s music would revisit the top of the charts in the wake of his too-early death. A reworked version of his first-ever chart-topping smash soared to No. 1 again in the U.K. amid mourning after Harrison lost a battle with cancer.

No. 16. “My Sweet Lord (2000)”
From: All Things Must Pass (2001 reissue)
(On the charts: No. 1 in the UK)

The original version of “My Sweet Lord” featured a cast of thousands and enough reverb to bring down Abbey Road studios. All anybody remembered, however, was the lawsuit. So, years later, Harrison stripped all of that away – along with the call-and-response part that got him in trouble in the first place – for a competently conveyed (though frankly unneeded) remake. Listen for its one stand-out moment: Harrison admitted that he recorded this update in order to “play a better slide guitar solo.” Remarkably enough, he succeeded.

No. 15. “Ding Dong, Ding Dong”
From: Dark Horse (1974)
On the charts: No. 36 in America; No. 38 in the UK)

On the quite dark Dark Horse, even his attempt at writing a holiday classic ends up taking on a strikingly dispirited undertone. Lyrics like “ring out the old, ring in the new” collide with an overall feeling of doom as Harrison weathered a season of loss.

No. 14. “Any Road”
From: Brainwashed (2002)
On the charts: No. 37 in the UK

Harrison had some version of this song in his head since the early Wilburys era, and it retained their easy-go-lucky vibe – despite an edgier subject (“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there“) perhaps inspired by an exchange in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Harrison walks a fine line here, never giving in to the impulse to insult or become facetious. After all, we’ve all taken a wrong turn or two.

No. 13. “Bangla Desh”
From: Single (1971)
On the charts: No. 23 in America; No. 10 in the UK

Harrison should be credited for a great idea, as he created the first charity pop single. Unfortunately, “Bangla Desh” feels only half drawn, likely because it was created in a such a hurry so that this stand-alone song could arrive before a huge benefit concert in support of the country’s refugees. Harrison later admitted to composing “Bangla Desh” in “10 minutes at the piano,” and, quite frankly, that’s just how it sounds.

No. 12. “Dark Horse”
From: Dark Horse (1974)
On the charts: No. 15 in America

Harrison goes down swinging as “Dark Horse” takes on critics, his ex and his former bandmates – possibly among others – but it’s delivered with a ravaged voice. That made the bonus-cut earlier take, recorded before laryngitis, an utter revelation.

No. 11. “Crackerbox Palace”
From: Thirty-Three and a Third (1976)
On the charts: No. 19 in America

The album’s title was a take off on the RPMs for vinyl and Harrison’s age on the proposed release date, and it held great playful promise. Only the record wasn’t released until his 33 2/3 birthday, in a preview of looming label issues. Too bad, since Thirty-Three and a Third was a vast improvement over Extra Texture (Read All About It), highlighted by this incredibly fun Top 20 hit. “Crackerbox Palace” was about the estate of friend Lord Buckley, putting an expectedly different spin (for Harrison anyway) on the line: “Know that the Lord is well.”

No. 10. “This Song”
From: Thirty Three & 1/3 (1976)
On the charts: No. 25 in America

Harrison had much more success when he hilariously lampooned the whole “My Sweet Lord” legal mess rather than trying to reverse-engineer a solution like he did for the 2001 reissue of All Things Must Pass.

No. 9. “You”
From: Extra Texture [Read All About It] (1975)
On the charts: No. 20 in America; No. 38 in the UK

Harrison had returned to drink and drugs, and Extra Texture couldn’t have strayed further from his religious moorings — or from the free-spirited uplift that made his initial post-Beatles records such pleasant surprises. This Top 20 U.S. hit – actually a relic from a scrapped 1971 solo album by Ronnie Spector – takes you right back. Still, it says a lot when the best thing on an LP is essentially a table scrap.

READ MORE: Ranking Every Beatles Solo Album

No. 8. “Got My Mind Set on You”
From: Cloud Nine (1987)
On the charts: No. 1 in America; No. 2 in the UK

Harrison discovered James Ray’s version of this song while browsing record shops during a 1963 visit with his sister in rural Illinois – months before the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan’s show. He didn’t return to “Got My Mind Set on You” for decades, but Harrison’s timing was impeccable: The Jeff Lynne-produced update gave Harrison a third chart-topping single just as his old band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

No. 7. “Blow Away”
From: George Harrison (1979)
On the charts: No. 16 in America

A soul-lifting track about clearing skies and opening hearts that’s aged as well as any solo Beatles single. Maybe better.

No. 6. “My Sweet Lord”
From: All Things Must Pass (1970)
On the charts: No. 1 in the America and UK

Docked several spots because he lost that court case. An American publishing company famously earned a $600,000 judgment after claiming that “My Sweet Lord” sounded too much like the early-’60s hit “He’s So Fine.” The court ruled that Harrison “subconsciously plagiarized” the song. Oddly, Harrison countered that he had, in fact, stolen it – but not from the Chiffons. Instead, he said it was originally inspired by Edwin Hawkins Singers’ “Oh Happy Day.”

No. 5. “When We Was Fab”
From: Cloud Nine (1987)
On the charts: No. 23 in America; No. 25 in the UK

Poking some good-natured fun at the Beatles’ Summer of Love-era excesses, “When We Was Fab” allowed Lynne to play every psychedelic card in the deck – adding strings, backward tapes and, of course, a sitar. The delightful video included sideman Ringo Starr and an actor miming McCartney’s left-handed bass while wearing a walrus costume; Beatles road manager Neil Aspinall also passes by at one point with a copy of Lennon’s 1971 album Imagine. All of it felt like a bittersweet reverie, even then.

No. 4. “All Those Years Ago”
From: Somewhere in England (1981)
On the charts: No. 2 in America; No. 13 in the UK

Under label pressure, Harrison provided some late-session replacement songs that included this big hit, a requiem for the late John Lennon. His awful murder sparked an unlikely reunion that included McCartney and Starr, Beatles producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick. Even Denny Laine and Linda McCartney from Wings were there. The results were so incandescent that they almost – but not quite – make up for the dreck found elsewhere on Somewhere in England.

No. 3. “Handle With Care”
From: The Traveling Wilburys’ Vol. 1 (1988)
On the charts: No. 21 in the UK

Harrison’s smash hit about sly resiliency was originally recorded as a throwaway B-side, until his label intervened. He’d called up Lynne, who was then working with Roy Orbison. They arranged to use Bob Dylan‘s studio, then Tom Petty got involved when Harrison stopped by to retrieve a guitar. All of sudden, perhaps rock’s greatest supergroup was born. Warner Bros. wasn’t going to bury their first song on the back of Harrison’s “This Is Love” single. Lucky us.

No. 2. “What Is Life”
From: All Things Must Pass (1970)
On the charts: No. 10 in America

A towering rocker from Harrison’s six-times platinum-selling debut, “What Is Life” actually warranted Phil Spector‘s infamous Wall of Sound approach. He ended up assembling a who’s-who for the session: Badfinger added extra layers to a sweeping exclamation of passion, while the background vocals were credited to the George O’Hara-Smith singers — Bobby Whitlock and Eric Clapton, the future nucleus of Derek and the Dominos. Predictably, the results couldn’t be more widescreen – and yet “What Is Life” never loses its sense of intimate joy.

No. 1. “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)”
From: Living in the Material World (1973)
On the charts: No. 1 in America; No. 8 in the UK

In a way, there wasn’t any other direction to go but smaller. Harrison had already reached No. 1 in both the U.S. and U.K. with his over-stuffed triple-disc solo debut and towering lead single, then organized a huge Bangladesh benefit concert. So, this time he gathered a tightly knit quartet of confidants – only Gary Wright, Klaus Voormann, Jim Keltner and Nicky Hopkins – to record something Harrison later described as “a prayer and personal statement between me, the Lord and whoever likes it.” Turns out everybody did. Harrison’s expressive slide took center stage, rather than all those sidemen, while his message became more direct. All of it worked in tandem to render universal truths about healing and forgiveness. Oh, and another No. 1 song.