George Harrison wrote ‘Here Comes the Sun’ at the end of a long cold stretch, and the song has been carrying people out of their own long cold stretches ever since. That tension between exhaustion and relief, between something that has been absent for what feels like years and the moment it finally returns, is what makes this track feel less like a pop record and more like a meteorological event. The 2019 mix pairs the song with an official visual treatment that lets the music do what it has always done: arrive quietly, then fill everything.
A song built from the feeling that winter had gone on too long
The lyric does not describe joy so much as the recognition of joy returning. ‘Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter’ is not a complaint so much as the precise emotional coordinate that makes the warmth mean something. The song locates you in the cold first, then turns the light on. That sequencing is the whole trick: ‘It feels like years since it’s been here’ lands with weight because the listener has almost certainly felt exactly that, whether the absence was a season, a relationship, a run of difficult months, or something harder to name.
The structure mirrors that movement. The opening guitar figure arrives almost tentatively, a single repeated phrase that feels like checking whether the door is unlocked. The verses accumulate, the ‘Sun, sun, sun, here it comes’ bridge builds in small insistent steps, and by the time the ice is slowly melting in the final verse, the arrangement has opened up enough that ‘It’s all right’ lands as a genuine declaration rather than a consolation.
What the 2019 mix changes and what it leaves alone
The remix brings Harrison’s acoustic guitar further into the center, giving it a presence that holds the listener closer to the original recording session without stripping the track of its warmth. The outro, a soft guitar fade that declines to end with any flourish, is still the most honest part of the song. It does not celebrate. It simply lets the sun stay.
Harrison put it plainly in the lyric itself: ‘I feel that ice is slowly melting.’ Not melted. Slowly melting. The relief is still in progress, which is the detail that keeps the song honest rather than triumphant.
The guitar figure that started everything
The opening six-string phrase that carries the whole song into the room, repeated across the intro and the interlude without variation.
Fifty-five years after it was recorded, that phrase is still the sound of something cold beginning to break.
Words are not sufficient for explaining or describing The Beatles, and how they helped make the World A Better Place –
John Lennon | Paul McCartney | George Harrison | Ringo Starr
But ALWAYS remind yourself to Imagine, Believe, Achieve … And don’t forget the lessons of Yesterday 🙂
Yesterday is important, so Let it Be 😉
Hey Jude, remember Elanor Rigby is a lesson to never forget, and also critically essential that While My Guitar Gently Weeps we remember all of the whys In My Life every Now and Then … 😉 ✌️☮️❤️ Don’t miss Ringo Starr on The Beatles Secret to Success and The Beatles Final Rooftop Performance!
And WHEN you are occasionally down, don’t worry, Tomorrow is Another Day and…
