"This Song" is the fourth track on George Harrison's 1976 album Thirty Three & 1/3. It was released as the first single from the album and reached number 25 on the American pop charts, although, like all three singles from the album, it failed to chart in the UK.
History
"This Song" was written after the week Harrison spent in a New York courtroom, unsuccessfully trying to convince a judge that his 1970 song "My Sweet Lord" did not infringe the copyright of the Chiffons' 1963 hit "He's So Fine". According to Harrison, the plaintiff's witnesses got ridiculously in-depth, breaking "My Sweet Lord" down into several melody lines, or "motifs", as they referred to them. The plaintiff's expert also drew up several charts with large musical notes on it to prove the point. Harrison said in his autobiography, I, Me, Mine, that after several days, he "started to believe that maybe they did own those notes". After he lost the case, Harrison wrote "This Song", which released his frustration at the infringement case in the form of an uptempo, piano-driven boogie. It features Billy Preston on piano and organ, and Monty Python'sEric Idle calling out a falsetto "Could be 'Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch' – No, sounds more like 'Rescue Me'!" interjection right before the instrumental break. The company Bright Tunes owned the copyright to "He's So Fine", which inspired the line, "This tune has nothing Bright about it". Writing for Goldminemagazine in January 2002, Dave Thompson described "This Song" as "a brilliantly constructed commentary on Harrison's more recent travails". Billboard described it as being "irresistible" due to its cheerfulness and the way "the words so cleverly play on the concept of trying to write an entertaining non-controversial song." The song also has a humorous music video. The video features Harrison in a courtroom along with a cast of many of his friends. Drummer Jim Keltner appears as the judge and the Rolling Stones'sRonnie Wood mimics Idle's aforementioned falsetto words. The video was directed by Michael Collins for Rosebud Films. Chicago radio superstation WLS, which gave "This Song" much airplay, ranked it as the 72nd most popular hit of 1977. It reached as high as number 7 on their survey of January 15, 1977.
