Credit: Far Out / Alamy / Koen Suyk / Anefo / Library of Congress
Sat 10 October 2026 1:00, UK
Chart success is rarely a sure-fire mark of songwriting quality. If it were, Bruce Springsteen would have reached the top of the charts at some point, and Cliff Richard would have got there with far less regularity. Still, you would think the collective power of a former Beatle, a legendary producer, and a gifted vocalist would make for a guaranteed hit.
The Beatles, after all, had the Midas touch during their 1960s heyday. With a whopping 18 number-one singles under their belt to date, the rush of Beatlemania dominated the commercial wing of the music industry throughout the decade. Their break-up in 1970 meant the world was desperate for any more material even remotely connected to the Fab Four. Yet when the George Harrison-penned single ‘Try Some, Buy Some’ hit the airwaves in 1971, it failed to register for most audiences.
Recorded by the unmistakable voice of Ronnie Spector, and supported by the production prowess of her then-husband, the since-disgraced Phil Spector, the collective chart experience and music industry power behind ‘Try Some, Buy Some’ was unparalleled back in 1971. Bizarrely, though, the song never even entered the top 40, languishing at 77 before falling back out of the charts without a trace.
The reasons for that commercial failure are up for debate. You could argue, for instance, that the song’s title makes it sound like an advertising jingle for a high-street supermarket. Alternatively, the track’s downbeat mood perhaps didn’t suit Ronnie’s voice the way the high-energy, ‘Be My Baby’-style songs she was best known for did.
Then, once you dig into the story behind the single, its doomed commercial performance starts to make more sense. It was, after all, an unused off-cut from Harrison’s already expansive All Things Must Pass project. What’s more, the track was intended to be part of an entire Ronnie Spector comeback album, but ended up being the only song to be completed before Phil abandoned the project.
It wasn’t necessarily the greatest track intended for that album, but simply the first one they got finished and then pushed out as a single. Suddenly, it isn’t so difficult to understand why the track didn’t climb the heights of the Hit Parade.
Nevertheless, the Apple Records song certainly had its admirers, perhaps most famously David Bowie, who, on the cusp of his glam-rock breakthrough in 1971, fell hard for Ronnie’s emotive vocal.
Further reading: From The Vault
Such was the extent of Bowie’s adoration for the song that he was determined to record a cover version as a follow-up to 1973’s Pin Ups, but it wasn’t until 2003’s much-maligned Reality album that his version finally saw the light of day. By then, though, even Bowie’s all-encompassing star power couldn’t resurrect the long-forgotten single.
Today, ‘Try Some, Buy Some’ remains a woefully underrated track, particularly for a song that boasts the collective power of Harrison, Bowie, Ronnie, and Phil at one time or another. For its admirers, like Bowie, though, it is more akin to a hidden gem than a commercial failure.
