'Here Comes The Sun' by The Beatles: The making of George Harrison's sunshine masterpiece

10 February 2025, 14:11

Is 'Here Comes The Sun' the most popular Beatles song of modern times?

If you include 'Now and Then', The Beatles recorded a total of 213 different songs. 25 of them were covers of rock 'n' roll classics, pop standards and country hits.

The bulk of the other 188 were compositions by the immortal songwriting team of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

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Alongside a trio of curios with full band co-writes – namely Let It Be's 'Dig It' and 'Maggie Mae' and Magical Mystery Tour's 'Flying' – George Harrison wrote just 22 of the songs officially released by The Beatles.

But if you go on to Spotify and look up The Beatles and look at their top ranked songs, one track is way out in front of all the others.

'Here Comes The Sun' has racked up over 1.5 BILLION listens in the ten years since The Beatles belated came to the platform.

John Lennon's 'Come Together' is languishing in second place with a mere 811 million spins. Read on to find out how this not-even-a-single became such a hit.

Who wrote 'Here Comes The Sun'?

The Beatles - Here Comes The Sun (2019 Mix)

We just made a big song and dance about the song being one of George Harrison's, but you do have to be careful with songwriting credits.

Some of the songs listed as Lennon-McCartney weren't exactly that. 'Yesterday' was entirely written by Paul McCartney while 'Please Please Please' me was one of John's solo efforts, for example.

'Octopus's Garden' is credited to Ringo Starr alone, but the Get Back documentary shows George giving his bandmate a helping hand.

But by all accounts 'Here Comes The Sun' was a solo George Harrison composition.

While The Beatles were enduring some strained times that would eventually lead to their break-up, George wrote 'Here Comes The Sun' in Eric Clapton's garden.

He was apparently hanging out at his guitarist pal's home to avoid yet another interminable Apple Corps meeting. It had been an especially long, cold winter that year and the sun had finally burst through that spring.

"'Here Comes the Sun' was written at the time when Apple was getting like school, where we had to go and be businessmen: 'Sign this' and 'sign that'," said George in his memoir I, Me, Mine.

"Anyway, it seems as if winter in England goes on forever, by the time spring comes you really deserve it. So one day I decided I was going to sag off Apple and I went over to Eric Clapton's house.

George Harrison: Living in the Material World documentary trailer

"The relief of not having to go see all those dopey accountants was wonderful, and I walked around the garden with one of Eric's acoustic guitars and wrote 'Here Comes the Sun'."

In Martin Scorsese's 2011 film George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Clapton backed up this story.

"He was just a magical guy and he would show up, get out of the car with his guitar and come in and start playing," he said.

"I just watched this thing come to life. I felt very proud that it was my garden that was inspiring it."

He polished off the lyrics in June while on holiday in the even-sunnier Sardinia. Hand-scrawled lyrics show the sparse words shortened even further with repeated abbreviations for "Here comes the sun" as "H.C.T.S." and "Little darling as "L.D.".

What is 'Here Comes The Sun' about?

On a literal level we've pretty much covered this.

After the seemingly eternal, bitterly cold winter of 1968-1969, the sun burst through in Eric Clapton's lovely back garden at Hurtwood Edge in Ewhurst, Surrey.

The weather in Sardinia a couple of months later would have inspired even more sunny thoughts to help bust through the freezing cobwebs.

On a more metaphorical level, the Beatles had been struggling with all their business matters following the tragic death of Brian Epstein.

In 1969 he told the BBC that he hadn't even been able to play guitar for a while, thanks to all the time spent wrangling, but when he finally picked up the instrument "the first thing that came out was that song".

More broadly, the song reflected the hope that good times were coming round the corner after what felt like the bitter end of the countercultural movement that had promised so much, as Richard Nixon won the presidency and the war in Vietnam raged on.

While Hunter S Thompson mourned "that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back", 'Here Comes The Sun' hinted at something of a resurgence.

It wasn't to be, as Altamont and the Beatles break-up appeared to officially rubber-stam the end of the 1960s ("the dream is over", as John Lennon would say in 'God'), but for a brief moment that summer George Harrison had offered some real hope. 'Here Comes The Sun' indeed.

Who plays what on 'Here Comes The Sun'?

It's easy to yelp "John, Paul, George, Ringo" as the answer to any question about who played on a Beatles record, but of course it's not that simple.

'Yesterday' is effectively a solo Paul song, with Macca backed by a four-piece string section. Paul played drums on a couple of handfuls of Beatles songs, like 'Back in the USSR'. Paul sat out Lennon's 'She Said She Said', with George playing bass instead. On many songs George Martin was a player as well as producer.

And 'Here Comes The Sun' is one of those songs that doesn't feature all four Beatles.

John Lennon was near Durness in the Scottish Highlands on July 1, 1969, when he crashed his white British Leyland Austin Maxi in a ditch. It was a pretty bad one, too with Lennon getting 17 stitches in his face at Golspie's Lawson Memorial Hospital.

With Lennon recovering, it was George, Paul and Ringo who laid down the rhythm track on July 7 at Abbey Road studios, with it needing 13 takes.

That's a lot better than Harrison's 'Not Guilty'. That proposed song for The Beatles (aka The White Album) song endured 102 takes, and still didn't get completed. It was eventually re-recorded by George for his 1979 solo album George Harrison, with an unfinished Beatles' version surfacing on Anthology 3 in 1996.

Back to 'Here Comes The Sun', Harrison recorded his lead vocals a day later, and then double-tracked some backing vocals with Paul.

When was 'Here Comes The Sun' released and where did it get in the charts?

'Here Comes The Sun' wasn't released as a single in the UK or the US.

Instead, it opened up the second side of Abbey Road, the second-last album The Beatles released and actually the last they recorded.

Abbeadly y Road was released on September 26, 1969. Like every proper Beatles album it went to number one in the UK album charts (the soundtrack album Yellow Submarine, half made up of George Martin compositions, got to number two). It topped the US album chart, too.

The album has gone eight times platinum in the US and TWELVE times platinum in US and has sold an estimated 31,000,000 copies worldwide.

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'Here Comes The Sun' did earn a spot as the B-side to Japan-only single 'Oh! Darling', and alongside 'Something' appeared on The Beatles 1967-1970 compilation (aka The Blue Album).

Even before downloads, 'Here Comes The Sun' was a well-loved track and a favourite of radio DJs.

Once The Beatles popped up on iTunes, fans downloading the song pushed it to number 64 on the UK singles chart in November 2010. Two years later it did even better, going to 58. It also raced to number 14 on the US Billboard Hot Rock Songs list in 2017, and as streaming took hold, it later went top ten on that chart.

Ah yes, streaming.

An ever-present on weather and summer playlists helped the song become The Beatles' first (and to date, only) billion-streaming song on Spotify. At its current rate we assume it'll hit that two billion figure in just a few years.

Who has covered 'Here Comes The Sun'?

Nina Simone - Here Comes the Sun (Audio)

While 'Yesterday' is said to be the most covered song in pop history, 'Here Comes The Sun' hasn't done too badly on that score either.

Before we look to other artists giving it a go, Harrison played the song with Pete Ham of Badfinger at the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971, and continued to perform it in his solo years.

Special mentions should go to his duet with Paul Simon on Saturday Night Live in 1976 and with Ringo Starr, Jeff Lynne and Elton John at the Prince's Trust Concerts in London in 1987.

Steve Harley - Here Comes The Sun (1976)

A remixed version by George and Giles Martin that borrowed from other Beatles songs appeared on the Cirque du Soleil Love album.

Beyond George and The Beatles, the list is pretty endless.

Early covers came from Booker T. & the M.G.'s, George Benson, Richie Havens, Nina Simone, Peter Tosh and Charles Wight.

Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton - Something (Live)

As the years went on, other artists to try their hand at Harrison's masterpiece included Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, Sandy Farina for the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band movie, Joe Brown, Paul Simon and Jon Bon Jovi.

Womack & Womack, Lou Rawls, Travis, Nick Cave, Gary Barlow & The Commonwealth Band and Cliff Richard have put their spin on it, while Paul McCartney performed it with Eric Clapton as a tribute to George.