Did Frank Sinatra really think "Something" was a Lennon/McCartney song?

If you've read enough Beatles history, you've encountered the claim: Frank Sinatra, the Chairman of the Board himself, repeatedly introduced "Something" as his "favourite Lennon & McCartney number." It's the kind of anecdote that feels too good not to be true, a legendary misunderstanding that says something about the cultural gravity of Lennon and McCartney, even over Harrison's finest composition. But like the persistent myth that Ringo wasn't the best drummer in The Beatles, this one might be one of those semi-apocryphal lines which has taken on a life of its own.

The investigation starts with Paul McCartney himself. In The Beatles Anthology, Episode 4, broadcast in 1995, McCartney discusses the Sinatra misattribution. That's our upper bound. To find the truth, we need to look for sources from before that broadcast, in an era when the internet was barely a whisper.

Google's mismanagement of the USENET archives is a cultural obscenity, but fragments survive. A post from December 26, 1994 mentions that "Frankie used to introduce 'Something' as his 'tribute to Mr. Lennon and Mr. McCartney.'" An earlier post from March 5, 1990 describes a friend who, "just like Frank Sinatra, didn't know that George wrote 'Something.'" So the proto-meme existed before McCartney's broadcast, but that doesn't make it true.

Of the thousands of Beatles books, none from before the mid-1990s mention Sinatra's misattribution. The 1994 Complete Guide to the Music of the Beatles says simply that Sinatra considered it "one of the best love songs ever written." Similarly, books and articles about Sinatra talk about "Something," but never mention this supposed misrepresentation.

In 1980's New York Magazine, Sinatra is interviewed and says: "I think it's the greatest love song ever written." No mention of Lennon or McCartney. Just Harrison.

There are many videos of Sinatra singing "Something" on YouTube. None of them have him introducing the song as a Lennon/McCartney number. In fact, here's one where he introduces it as being by George Harrison. That's 1982's The Concert for the Americas in the Dominican Republic. A 1985 concert? He introduces it as being by George Harrison of The Beatles. Way back in 1978 at Sinatra's Caesar's Palace Concert, he introduces it with "George Harrison wrote it" and finishes with "by George Harrison." Even in 1975, during a concert in Jerusalem, he was crediting Harrison: "Every one of The Beatles was a very talented young man individually. And here's an example of George Harrison with a great love song."

Dozens of recordings of Sinatra singing "Something" live reveal no mention of John Lennon or Paul McCartney. So is the quote apocryphal? Possibly not entirely.

Less than a year after John Lennon was murdered, Sinatra treated Carnegie Hall to a series of 11 concerts. On September 10, 1981, John Rockwell published a review of the opening night in the New York Times. On the 10th, a clutch of US papers reproduced a story by Mary Campbell of the Associated Press. On the 11th, Patricia O'Haire published a somewhat snide review of the September 9th concert in The New York Daily News. By the 29th of September 1981, the story had made it to Australian Financial Times' The Bulletin.

It's unclear how many of those journalists were actually at the concert. Rockwell, Campbell, and O'Haire likely were, given their detailed reviews. But tracking down a set-list for that long-gone concert is tricky. Carnegie Hall themselves get the dates wrong in their archive. The Sinatraphiles mailing list has a set-list for the 9th which does include "Something."

A purported recording of the September 10th concert includes a set-list on the reverse. There's no "Lennon" song. The only Beatles number is "Something." And the introduction from that bootleg recording? "Something... A beautiful song by George Harrison. Maybe one of the best love songs ever written."

So that's a handful of contemporary sources who mention that Sinatra once introduced "Something" as being composed by someone other than Harrison. The only recording is of the concert the next day, and it doesn't include that "blooper." There are no other mentions that directly cite a specific concert or performance.

Did Sinatra ever say it was his "favourite Lennon and McCartney song"? He sang in thousands of shows, not all of which were recorded, so it's entirely possible he mentioned it. But you'd expect more than a few reporters would write about it.

The origin of the "quote," as far as can be determined, is from an interview Paul McCartney gave to David Hinckley in the New York Daily News on October 21, 1984. That's the first time "Something" is mentioned as Sinatra's "favorite Lennon-McCartney song."

Consider the evidence. Dozens of live recordings across decades show Sinatra crediting Harrison. Concert reviews from the 1970s, when British reporters were reviewing his performances, don't mention any misattribution. The Complete Guide to the Music of the Beatles from 1994 doesn't mention it. And the origin point appears to be McCartney's own retelling in 1984, three years after the Carnegie Hall concerts.

There are two slightly contradictory reports of one single concert and no suggestion that Sinatra himself said it was his "favorite Lennon-McCartney song." Given that he repeatedly credited George Harrison in the decade leading up to that concert, the "quote" has taken on a significance far beyond its actual importance.

Sinatra first sang "Something" in December 1970 on The Dean Martin Show, about a year after its release on Abbey Road. His performance doesn't contain him saying anything about the song. Over the next two decades, he performed it hundreds of times, and the overwhelming evidence shows he knew exactly who wrote it.

The myth persists because it tells us something about cultural hierarchies, about how Lennon and McCartney's names became so dominant that even Harrison's masterpiece gets absorbed into their orbit. But the evidence suggests that Sinatra, whatever his other qualities, had no trouble giving George Harrison his due.