‘Only a Northern Song’
The Most
Subversive Song in the Beatles’ Catalogue?
Written by George Harrison and recorded in
1967, ‘Only a Northern Song’ with its discordant brass and drifting harmonies is
often dismissed as a deliberately sloppy experiment. But beneath what sounds like carelessness, lies
a calculated act of self- critique and sabotage; a deliberate act of subversion
aimed at the music publishing industry, at the band’s internal power dynamic,
and at the expectations of its audience.
Alongside the earlier ‘Taxman’ and the later
‘Not Guilty’, the song is unambiguously an expression of George’s frustration
within The Beatles, but there is also a strong case to be made that it functions
as a deconstruction of popular music and the financial business shenanigans
around it. In this respect it foreshadows later developments in experimental
rock, conceptual art, and what would later be called meta-commentary in popular
music.
To appreciate the context of ‘Only a Northern
Song,’ it helps to understand a little of Northern Songs Limited.
This was the music publishing company formed
in 1963 primarily to manage the Lennon–McCartney songwriting catalogue. Dick
James (the music publisher), John Lennon and Paul McCartney and Brian Epstein were
the principal shareholders and beneficiaries.
Following a flotation of the company in 1965, Johns and Paul held 15%
each, NEMS held 7.5%, Dick James (and
his partner Charles Silver) held 37.5% while George Harrison and Ringo Starr were very much
minority shareholders with 0.8% each.
By 1967, George had become increasingly aware
of this structural inequality and its financial consequences. He had also grown
significantly as a songwriter. ‘If I Needed Someone,’ ‘Taxman,’ and ‘Love You
To’ demonstrate a distinctive voice — musically adventurous, lyrically
incisive, and increasingly concerned with questions of belief, identity and control.
Further, he had grown weary and openly
disenchanted with the touring – as had they all – and even of being a Beatle.
‘It was becoming difficult for me because I wasn't
really that into it...I'd
just got back from India, and my heart was still out there. After what happened
in 1966, everything else seemed like hard work. It was a job, like doing
something I didn't really want to do, and I was losing interest in being 'fab'
at that point.’
George in ‘Anthology’
Within the band George remained subordinate. Creatively,
he had to compete with Lennon and McCartney’s ‘wondrous hits’ and financially,
only Ringo profited less from being a Beatle.
‘Their songs had always been published by Northern
Songs Ltd, 30 per cent of whose shares belonged to John and Paul, with Ringo
and George owning only 1.6 per cent each. This meant that John and Paul, in
addition to being the group's main songwriters, were twice benefiting as prime
shareholders in the publishing company. As far as Northern Songs was concerned,
George was merely a contracted writer.’
Steve Turner , ‘A Hard Day's Write’
(1995)
‘Only a Northern Song’ emerges from this
frustration.
‘It was at the point that I realized Dick James had
conned me out of the copyrights for my own songs by offering to become my
publisher. As an 18 or 19-year-old kid, I thought, 'Great, somebody's gonna
publish my songs!'
But he never said, 'And incidentally, when you
sign this document here, you're assigning me the ownership of the songs,' which
is what it is. It was just a blatant theft.
By the time I realized what had happened, when
they were going public and making all this money out of this catalogue, I wrote
'Only A Northern Song' as what we call a 'piss-take,' just to have a joke about
it.’
George in ‘Anthology’
The song is a commentary on the conditions of
its own creation. The act of writing it is compromised even before its
creation.
Peter Doggett characterizes the song as:
‘[A] rare moment when a Beatle
openly questioned the value of his own work—not out of insecurity, but out of
anger at how that work was owned’
(Peter Doggett, ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’ 2010)
George is quite explicitly telling the
listener – the consumer - that no matter how clever, how moving, or well-written
or recorded the song may be, it is ultimately a financial asset. It is no different from the piece of plastic
onto which it will be pressed.
This song serves as both personal grievance
and corporate critique, reflecting George’s marginalization within the Beatles’
economic and creative hierarchy.
At the same time, at least in its initial
creation and by reference to its title, the song would seem to sit comfortably alongside
‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Penny Lane’. Certainly, George has spoken of
it in those terms.
‘'Only A Northern Song' was a joke relating to
Liverpool, the Holy City in the North of England’
George in ‘Anthology.’
Whereas John and Paul mine their childhood
experiences for inspiration, George – always on alert to wordplay – perhaps starting out with the same
intention, quickly turns to his present-day dissatisfactions for inspiration.
Rather than metaphor or narrative, George
employs direct explanation and irony:
If you’re listening to this song
You may think the chords are going wrong
But they’re not
He just wrote it like that
Harrison is essentially ‘breaking the fourth
wall’; drawing attention to the machinery behind the song.
In 1967 this breaking of the fourth wall was novel within mainstream popular music. Subsequently it has become commonplace; perhaps most famously Leonard Cohen calling the chord changes in 'Hallelujah'.
These lines however do more that might first appear. On the surface, they explicitly excuse the song’s harmonic oddities. But they also challenge the assumption that musical correctness is either necessary or inherently meaningful. The ‘wrong’ chords are intentional, but that intention is itself rendered redundant by the fact that the writer neither owns nor fairly benefits from the song.
It doesn’t really matter what chords I play
What words I say or time of day it is
As it’s only a Northern Song
In other words, meaning is irrelevant within a
system that strips the artist of both agency and fair reward. This takes the external
resentment of ‘Taxman’ and taking it up several notches turns it towards the
internal act of song writing itself.
The song is ‘only’ a Northern Song. It belongs only to Northern Songs Limited, it
is valuable only as a corporate asset, and it is significant only insofar as it
will generate revenue for the corporate shareholders, Johns and Paul being
amongst those.
There is also of course a clear secondary meaning
in the line:
It doesn’t really matter what chords I play
The Beatles had just finished their final tour playing in cavernous
venues in which neither the band nor the screaming fans could hear the music.
‘There was no satisfaction in it. Nobody could
hear. It was just a bloody big row. We got worse as musicians, playing the same
old junk every day.’
George in the Hunter Davies’ ‘The
Beatles (1968)
At this
point in the Beatles’ career, on stage it literally did not matter what chords
they played.
A disconnect between music and lyrical content
is an issue in some of The Beatles early songs. ‘Help!’ for example is literally a cry for
help but set to a jaunty beat. Here the music and the lyric perfectly
complement one another. Musically, ‘Only
a Northern Song’ is constructed to reinforce the lyrical message.
The song mocks conventional pop structures at
nearly every turn. Brass instruments enter with deliberately sour intonation clashing
with the vocal melody and each other. It almost drifts to an end. Nothing truly ‘matters’ within this musical ecosystem.
The song was recorded during the Sgt. Pepper sessions but ultimately excluded from the album.
George brought the song into the studio for the first time on 13th February 1967.
Geoff Emerick, in his
book ‘Here, There And
Everywhere,’ gives his usual half remembered and dismissive
take:
‘Unfortunately,
George's songwriting wasn't quite as impressive (as John and Paul's). His first
attempt at contributing a song to the 'Sgt. Pepper' album was...a weak track that we all winced at. It was
called 'Only A Northern Song,' and it had minimal musical content that seemed
to go nowhere. What's more, the lyrics seemed to reflect both his creative
frustration and his annoyance with the way the pie was being sliced financially
... It seemed like such an inappropriate song to be bringing to what was
generally a happy, upbeat album.
In our private conversations, George Martin simply
said, 'I'm disappointed that George didn't come up with something better,' but
I knew what he really meant; he was always on his guard because he didn't ever
want disparaging comments to be reported back. The other Beatles were clearly
underwhelmed too. John was so uninspired, in fact, that he decided not to
participate in the backing track at all.
Still, Paul, Ringo, and George ambled through quite a few
takes...it took a long time because nobody could really get into it, not even
George himself. I think he was actually a bit embarrassed about the song...None
of the takes they did that night were particularly good.’
In the evening of the next day they were back in the studio. Reduction mixes were made and George added his lead vocal.
At this stage the lyric is slightly different, as can be heard on 'Anthology 2'.
According to Emerick:
‘Shortly afterwards, an unhappy Paul said, 'Look,
let's knock it on the head for the night,' and they ended the session early.’
‘There was
no more mention of resuming work on the song until after the mixes of 'Pepper' were done and they were looking for material to give to the
'Yellow Submarine' film project. It
wouldn't surprise me if John and Paul had simply told George to go back to the
drawing board and come up with something better.’
Almost a month later George would bring in 'Within You Without You'.
On April 27th The Beatles returned to the studio to finish 'Only A Northern Song' which had now been earmarked for the 'Yellow Submarine' film soundtrack.
Paul's bass part was wiped and re-recorded. Then the band recorded various overdubs comprising tape noises, sound effects and trumpet.
‘I remember playing a silly trumpet. My dad used
to play. I can't but I can mess around a lot – and that song gave me the
perfect framework. It was very tongue in cheek.’
Paul in ‘Anthology’
These tape effects are deployed with the
result that the finished product borders on parody. It might sound incompetent,
but it is being used to underscore the sense of dislocation.
Beatlesebooks.com
suggests that:
The idea was that they would have two different recordings of
the song, one with the extravagant sound effects and the other with George's
lead vocals, but both with the same rhythm track recorded on February 13th,
which they figured could be synced together to form the finished product.
Syncing up ‘take three’ and ‘take 11’ became quite a
difficult task, eleven tries being needed to get it done satisfactorily. ‘Take
six,’ as it turned out, became the keeper.
One thing that was decided soon after was that it was deemed
impossible at the time to create a stereo version with their current
technology.
And so, the production inadvertently becomes part of the song’s central theme … why should I try to please you, when the results of my labour will neither belong to nor benefit me?
George then laid down a revised lyric. the first draft had included: the line:
‘I just
wrote them myself.’
Now he is referring to the writer in the third person:
‘he just
wrote it that way.’
Is he distancing himself from the song? Or perhaps further highlighting the disconnect between art and the artist?
The decision to exclude ‘Only a Northern Song’
from the Sgt. Pepper album is telling, and on one level can be judged correct. The album presents the studio as a playground
full of delightful and infinite possibility, while ‘Only a Northern Song’ is a
sour alienating tale of frustration and discontent. In that sense it appears to be completely at
odds with the sound and spirit of the album.
However, the Sgt. Pepper as an album itself borders
on meta-commentary. By
presenting themselves as the fictional Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,
The Beatles create a layer of distance between their real-world fame and their
artistic identity.
The
framing mirrors their own lives — constantly performing, constantly observed, their
lives a public show - and as such, it is both self-aware and myth-making. It is the Beatles essentially thinking about
what it means to be ‘The Beatles’. Seen in this context, ‘Only A Northern Song’
fits perfectly.
So, if not on Sgt. Pepper, where to place it?
It was eventually released on the ‘Yellow
Submarine’ soundtrack in 1969 where, surrounded by the title track, and ‘All
Together Now’, the song’s bitterness is thrown into sharp relief. For casual
listeners, it may register as mere eccentricity; just another bit of Beatles’
weirdness. It is however easily the album’s darkest and most corrosive track –
there is no competition.
It is ironic however that this sequencing also
highlights the song’s theme. ‘Only a Northern Song’ is side-lined, much like George
himself whether as a writer within the Beatles, or as the financial beneficiary
of the work.
‘Harrison’s publishing satire was quietly swept aside — which,
unintentionally, reinforced its message’
(Jonathan Gould, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ 2007)
In retrospect, it is possible to see ‘Only a
Northern Song’ as an early manifesto—an explicit declaration that George was no
longer content to play the role assigned to him.
The song also indirectly reflects George’s
growing interest in Eastern philosophy. Its detachment from ego-driven success
and material reward aligns with his broader worldview. The bitterness is real,
but so is the recognition that clinging to ownership and recognition can be
spiritually corrosive.
What makes the song genuinely strange is its
self-undermining impulse. The song does not deny the value of art; it exposes
the systems that distort it.
Ian MacDonald describes it as ‘designed to
sabotage its own value’ (‘Revolution In The Head’ (1994)) - George is deliberately
undermining his own craftsmanship, writing a song that announces its own
irrelevance.
The idea that a song can critique the industry
by refusing to function as a ‘good’ product would later become a cornerstone of
anti-commercial aesthetics in punk and postmodernism. .
What is striking though is that George’s
approach is subtler than outright rebellion. He does not scream or smash
instruments. He simply shrugs. The song’s tone is weary rather than furious.
This resignation is perhaps its most radical aspect. It suggests that the
system is not worth fighting directly; it is worth exposing and perhaps as a
result ultimately transcending.
At the time of its release, ‘Only a Northern
Song’ received little attention. Critics and fans tended to focus on the more
accessible material on ‘Yellow Submarine’, and on the fact that there were only
four new songs.
Over time, however, the song has been
re-evaluated. What once sounded messy now sounds intentional; what once seemed
trivial now feels conceptually rigorous.
‘It is one of the first pop songs to openly acknowledge that music
exists inside systems of power — and that those systems shape the art itself’
(Simon Frith, 'Performing Rites: On The Value of popular Music' (1996).
Through deliberate dissonance, overt satire,
and structural instability, George Harrison transforms a personal grievance
into a universal critique of artistic commodification. The song refuses to
entertain in conventional ways; it challenges the listener to confront the
systems that shape the music they love.
Rather than a minor oddity, a throwaway
experiment, ‘Only a Northern Song’ captures a moment when one of the world’s
most famous musicians openly questioned the value of fame, success, and his own
art under conditions of exploitation. In
doing so, it pushed against the possibilities of what a pop song could be—not
just entertainment, but a vehicle for the critique of its own existence.
As such ‘Only a Northern Song’ is one of The
Beatles’ most intellectually daring compositions.
In 2026 the song seems even more universally
relevant in an era of streaming platforms, corporate consolidation, algorithmic value, and
ongoing debates about who owns and who profits from an artist’s creative work.
