A triumphant declaration of love and identity
When What Is Life burst into public consciousness as the electrifying first track of All Things Must Pass (1970) by George Harrison, it carried the power of self-actualisation. Released as a single in the U.S. on 15 February 1971, it soared to No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking Harrison’s assertion beyond his Beatles past.
In its soaring riffs and heartfelt lyrics, “What Is Life” emerges not merely as a romantic plea but as a revelation of purpose—“my life without your love” becomes a question not just of personal longing, but of artistic identity, spiritual yearning, and the liberation of a musician finally freed to speak his own truth.
In the wake of the break-up of The Beatles, George Harrison found himself stepping into the light he had long shared with Lennon and McCartney. On All Things Must Pass—his triple-LP solo odyssey—he reclaimed songs that had been sidelined in the Beatles’ enterprise. “What Is Life” had been one such song: Harrison wrote it swiftly, reportedly in fifteen to thirty minutes while on his way to an Olympic Studios session for his friend and collaborator Billy Preston. Initially intended perhaps for Preston’s album, Harrison held onto it, knowing it had to belong to him.
Musically, it’s a riveting blend of punchy pop-rock and echoing spiritual overtones. Fuzz guitar riffs, a bold horn section, and the generous production of Phil Spector lend it an expansive, gospel-rock urgency. Lyrically, Harrison refuses to reduce the song to mere romantic sentiment: while the opening lines may seem address-able to a beloved, the refrain—“Tell me, what is my life without your love?”—exposes a deeper hunger for meaning. The “you” in the song becomes both the intimate other and the transcendent force that gives his life shape. As one of his biographers writes, Harrison offers his love “to someone special” and realises its power to compel him to “give my love now to everyone like you.”
What makes the song endure is how it captures the tension between self-expression and dependence, between the public role of a former Beatle and the private yearning of a man discovering his own voice. In contrast to Harrison’s more overtly spiritual songs on the same album—such as “My Sweet Lord”—“What Is Life” conceals its searching under the guise of an anthem. It is pop music that asks spiritual questions.
The cultural legacy of the track is worthy of its chart success. Internationally, the single reached No. 1 in countries like Switzerland and Australia. In the UK, it was issued as the B-side to “My Sweet Lord,” yet the pairing became the top-selling single of 1971. Which means “What Is Life,” though framed as a love song, became part of one of the most defining statements in the post-Beatles era.
In listening now—years after that triple LP shattered expectations—one hears Harrison not just asking “What is life?” but answering by living it: bold in his musical voice, sincere in his emotional reach, and unafraid of the question itself.