Happy Monday, folks! As you read this, I am probably standing in line to ride a rollercoaster at Walt Disney World down in Florida. This week, I thought I’d make up for not doing a playlist last week and take care of this week’s playlist by offering a double playlist of my top twenty George Harrison songs!

Honorable Mentions: There are too many George Harrison songs (or Harrisongs, as I like to think of ’em) on a couple of his albums to list every single great tune. I mean, I could’ve easily just done a top ten of my favorite songs off of All Things Must Pass. That being said, here are some of the songs that don’t make the playlist proper, but are still damn good: “My Sweet Lord,” “Beware of Darkness,” “Apple Scruffs,” “Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)”, “Crackerbox Palace” (it’s a weird one, trust me), “Dark Horse,” “The Devil’s Radio,” “I Got My Mind Set On You.” Also, please note there are no songs here from Wonderwall Music, because I’m not that much of a sadist. Okay, everyone good? Right, let’s go.

1. “Isn’t It a Pity (Version 1)”: It’s the “na na”s in the background in the song’s coda that really get to me, ’cause is George just messing with McCartney and “Hey Jude” for shits and giggles? I wouldn’t put it past him. But such a beautiful song.
2. “If Not For You”: Hey, it’s a Bob Dylan song! If you had that on your bingo card, you can go ahead and mark that square.
3. “Art of Dying”: So I recently downloaded the super deluxe version of the 50th Anniversary Remaster of All Things Must Pass (it has 70 tracks. Seventy! I can listen to it for like a week straight without repeating any songs), and this particular remaster (more so than the one from twenty-some years back) really clears up the sound quality on the album and makes things a lot clearer. I dig it. This song just rips.
4. “All Things Must Pass”: If there is a single song that sums up George Harrison as an individual and as a songwriter, I would put in a word for this one. It’s stately, but also down to earth, treats with eastern philosophy while not being too preachy, and has that sense of bittersweet honesty that I always sorta associate with George. It’s a great song.
5. “Bangala Desh”: A great song for a great cause, and let’s not dock points for the fact that it inspired the whole charity single, “We Are the World” nonsense in the 80s, okay?
6. “You”: It’s a simple song, almost lazy in its lyrics. George had that weakness sometimes. His songs are either clever satire, deep metaphysical meditations, or slapped together at the absolute last second because he needed a peppy single on the next record.
7. “Any Road”: Brainwashed is my third-favorite George album (after All Things Must Pass and Cloud 9, naturally), and it’s got some of his best-written songs on it. This one is simple in its formation and endless clever in execution.
8. “Stuck Inside a Cloud”: George, towards the end, had it pretty damn rough. Cancer is not a thing I would wish on my worst enemy (well, maybe on my worst enemy). He knew he was dying. And he still managed to write and record such a beautiful song.
9. “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”: This song is just such a goof. George loved the ukulele, and it’s front and center on this track.
10. “Cloud 9”: From the comeback album(TM) in the late ’80s, when everything Jeff Lynne produced turned to solid gold (seriously, he did Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever, the Heartbreakers’ Into the Great Wide Open, this one, and Roy Orbison’s Mystery Girl, all in the space of like three or four years. And helped produce the first Traveling Wilburys record. Dude was on fire). It’s a slow burn, slide guitar seduction that would get me to drop my pants if someone tried using it on me.
11. “When We Was Fab”: Ah, youth. The video for this particular song is great and just chock-full of Beatles Easter Eggs.
12. “Wreck of the Hesperus”: George was funny as hell. If he wasn’t picking apart the foibles of modern society in songs like “P2 Vatican Blues (Last Saturday Night)” or “Sue Me, Sue You Blues” or “Try Some Buy Some” (see further down this list for those last two), he was cracking jokes. The line “But I can still rock as good as Gibraltar” will never not be funny to me.
13. “Not Guilty”: That little guitar riff he does in this song? Love it.
14. “Cheer Down”: Speaking of cracking jokes, the title of this particular song remains funny to me. It’s a great pun, and the lyrics themselves are witty. This song was featured on the Lethal Weapon 2 soundtrack!
15. “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)”: Was George a little hippie-dippie? Oh, yeah. But he honestly meant it when he said stuff like this, I think.
16. “Sue Me, Sue You Blues”: He also meant stuff like this. The modern world was too capitalistic and crass for George. We didn’t deserve him.
17. “Don’t Make Me Wait Too Long”: George knows how to write a damn good love song (see “Something” for that), and this one ain’t half bad.
18. “Living in the Material World”: Of all of the Beatles, George was the one most fascinated with eastern philosophy and metaphysics, as we can see in this song. He also like racecar driving. Folks contain multitudes, y’know?
19. “Try Some Buy Some”: Consumerism is bad!
20. “All Those Years Ago”: The song George wrote about John Lennon after Lennon was shot. It features the other two Beatles on it as well, so that’s cool.