Within You Without You

"Within You Without You"
1971 Within You Without You Mexican EP cover
Song by the Beatles from the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Published	Northern Songs
Released	1 June 1967
Recorded	15 and 22 March, 3 April 1967, EMI Studios, London
Genre	Indian classical, raga rock
Length	5:05
Label	Parlophone
Writer(s)	George Harrison
Producer(s)	George Martin
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band track listing
Music sample
"Within You Without You"

"Within You Without You" is a song written by George Harrison and released on the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was Harrison's second composition in the Indian classical style, after "Love You To", and was inspired by his six-week stay in India with his mentor and sitar teacher, Ravi Shankar, over September–October 1966. Recorded in London without the other Beatles, the song features Indian instrumentation such as sitar, dilruba and tabla, and was performed by Harrison and members of the Asian Music Circle. The recording marked a significant departure from the Beatles' previous work; musically, it evokes the Indian devotional tradition, while the overtly spiritual quality of the lyrics reflects Harrison's absorption in Hindu philosophy and the teachings of the Vedas. Although the song was his only composition on Sgt. Pepper, Harrison's endorsement of Indian culture was further reflected in the inclusion of yogis such as Paramahansa Yogananda among the crowd depicted on the album cover.

With the worldwide success of the album, "Within You Without You" presented Indian classical music to a new audience in the West and contributed to the genre's peak in international popularity. It also influenced the philosophical direction of many of Harrison's peers during an era of utopian idealism marked by the Summer of Love. The song has traditionally received a varied response from music critics, some of whom find it lacklustre and pretentious, while others admire its musical authenticity and consider the message to be the most meaningful on Sgt. Pepper. Writing for Rolling Stone, David Fricke described the track as being "at once beautiful and severe, a magnetic sermon about materialism and communal responsibility in the middle of a record devoted to gentle Technicolor anarchy".