Perhaps the most inspiring part of this song is that George almost didn't give it to The Beatles. He thought it was too simple. He had been so beaten down by the Lennon/McCartney juggernaut that he assumed his "little tune" wasn't good enough.
You don’t need to be a Beatle to write your own “Something.” Ask yourself:
George heard Taylor’s “Something in the Way She Moves” and loved the phrasing. Rather than steal, he transformed it. He took a folk phrase and placed it over a jazz-tinged, bluesy bed. That alchemy—taking an outside influence and filtering it through your own soul—is the secret to originality.
Yes, Harrison wrote “Something” for his first wife, Pattie Boyd (who would later inspire Eric Clapton’s “Layla” ). However, George wasn’t writing about the honeymoon phase. He was writing about distance .
The inspiration behind it is universal. It wasn't just about Pattie Boyd, and it wasn't just about Ray Charles. It was about the feeling of being in the presence of something greater than yourself.
By 1968, during the Abbey Road sessions, George felt like a visitor in his own marriage. The line “You’re asking me will my love grow / I don’t know, I don’t know” isn’t a lack of passion—it is brutal, poetic honesty. He was capturing the fear of losing someone while still being captivated by them.