“Across the Universe” by The Beatles

"Across the Universe" first reached the public in December 1969, not on a Beatles album at all but on No One's Gonna Change Our World, a various-artists charity compilation. John Lennon wrote it, though as ever it carries the Lennon–McCartney credit, and he sings it in a dreamy, half-awake murmur over his own acoustic and electric guitars. George Harrison's tambura hums and drones underneath, Paul McCartney adds piano, and Ringo Starr keeps things feather-light on bass drum and maracas, with George Martin producing.

A different version turned up on Let It Be in 1970, the last studio album the group released, and the original resurfaced on the Rarities collections in Britain in 1978 and America in 1980, and again on Past Masters, Volume Two in 1988.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.