Something / Come Together

“Something / Come Together” was the 21st UK single from The Beatles. It was the first UK single The Beatles had ever released containing songs that were already available on an album. This was also the first Beatles single with a George Harrison song on the A-side.

They blessed me with a couple of B sides in the past,” he remarked at the time. “But this is the first time I’ve had an A-side. Big deal!

George Harrison – From “Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles” by Kenneth Womack, 2019

From Wikipedia:

Apple Records issued Abbey Road on 26 September 1969, with “Something” sequenced as the second track, following Lennon’s “Come Together“. Lennon considered “Something” to be the best song on the album. Having ensured that “Old Brown Shoe” was chosen as the B-side for the Beatles’ single “The Ballad of John and Yoko“, according to his later recollection, Lennon now pushed Allen Klein to release “Something” as a single from Abbey Road. Coupled with “Come Together”, the single was issued on 6 October in America (as Apple 2654) and 31 October in Britain (as Apple R5814).

The release marked the first time that a Harrison composition had been afforded A-side treatment on a Beatles single, as well as the only time during their career that a single was issued in the UK featuring tracks already available on an album. In a 1990 letter to Mark Lewisohn, Klein rebutted a claim made by Lewisohn in his book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, that the single was intended as a money-making exercise: Klein said it was purely a mark of Lennon’s regard for “Something” and “to point out George as a writer, and give him courage to go in and do his own LP. Which he did.”

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