All Things Must Pass

For years, George Harrison had been quietly accumulating songs that rarely found space within the Beatles. All Things Must Pass was the moment that dam finally broke. Expansive, spiritual and astonishingly assured, it revealed the supposed junior partner as a songwriter with an artistic world entirely his own.

Originally released as a triple album, the record moves between folk rock, gospel, devotional music and grand, widescreen rock. “My Sweet Lord” and “What Is Life” remain its most immediate moments, but the album’s emotional weight lies equally in songs such as “Isn’t It a Pity”, “Beware of Darkness” and the graceful title track. Harrison’s slide guitar gives the music its unmistakable voice, while the enormous cast of musicians helps create something communal without diminishing the deeply personal nature of the writing.

This 50th anniversary edition presents the album through a fresh stereo mix, bringing renewed clarity and definition to performances that had long sat beneath Phil Spector’s famously dense production. The layers remain rich and dramatic, but Harrison’s voice, guitars and songwriting are given more room to breathe. Rather than rewriting the record, the new mix allows its warmth, detail and humanity to emerge more clearly.

More than a post-Beatles statement, All Things Must Pass is the sound of creative freedom arriving all at once. Its scale is enormous, yet its reflections on change, faith, loss and renewal feel intimate and universal. Fifty years later, the album still sounds like an artist finally able to say everything he had been waiting to say.