Songs For Your Day

We were playing cribbage and listening to a Spotify mix my brother was curating in real time when I said, “Play ‘What is LIfe’ by George Harrison.” He looked up with a smile on his face and showed me his phone. “That is literally what I was searching for when you said that.”

Years ago I listened to George Harrison’s 1970 solo debut “All Things Must Pass” and thought it was meh. I must have accidentally slept through the song “What is Life” back then, because when it came up randomly on Spotify a few months ago I was floored by it. I remembered the album as a somewhat sleepy, sometimes dreamy set of philosophical songs. I had no recollection of the absolute pop masterpiece that is “What is Life.”

Opening bluntly with a tight guitar line, the song quickly piles on a blast of horns and drums that carries the same physical sensation as slamming on a gas pedal. Originally intended for a Billy Preston album Harrison was producing, between writing it and heading to the studio to show it to Preston, Harrison made the decision that it was too beautiful a baby to give up. I’m sure Preston would have done a good job with it, but thank Krishna Harrison recorded this absolutely amazing song himself.

My brother and I bobbed our heads while counting our cribbage hands and enjoyed that little moment of kismet we’d just shared, our minds mutually inclined toward the kind of joy this song brings.