George Harrison My Sweet Lord

The story behind My Sweet Lord by George Harrison: George Harrison’s first solo number-one single stands alone in the history of rock music for going against the secular grain as a full-on love song to the Creator. Sure, there’d been some precedent with both The Beach Boys’ God Only Knows and Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit In The Sky, but My Sweet Lord was different. The lyric is loaded with forty “Lords,” sixteen “Hallelujahs” and nine “Hare Krishnas.” As John Lennon joked about his former bandmate’s hit in 1970, “Every time I put the radio on, it’s ’Oh my Lord.’ I’m beginning to think there must be a God.” George Harrison started writing the song while he was on tour with Delaney & Bonnie in Sweden in late 1969. His inspiration was Oh Happy Day, an old gospel tune, rearranged in 1967 by The Edwin Hawkins Singers. Responding to that record’s joyful call-and-response vibe, Harrison said, “It really just knocked me out... I just felt a great feeling of t