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Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy \/ Koen Suyk \/ Anefo \/ Library of Congress<\/p>\n
Sat 10 October 2026 1:00, UK <\/p>\n
Chart success is rarely a sure-fire mark of songwriting quality. If it were, Bruce Springsteen would have reached the top of the charts<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n The Beatles, after all, had the Midas touch during their 1960s heyday. With a whopping 18 number-one singles<\/a> 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 \u2018Try Some, Buy Some\u2019 hit the airwaves in 1971, it failed to register for most audiences. <\/p>\n Recorded by the unmistakable voice of Ronnie Spector<\/a>, and supported by the production prowess of her then-husband, the since-disgraced Phil Spector, the collective chart experience and music industry power behind \u2018Try Some, Buy Some\u2019 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n The reasons for that commercial failure are up for debate. You could argue, for instance, that the song\u2019s title makes it sound like an advertising jingle for a high-street supermarket. Alternatively, the track\u2019s downbeat mood perhaps didn\u2019t suit Ronnie\u2019s voice the way the high-energy, \u2018Be My Baby\u2019-style songs she was best known for did. <\/p>\n 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\u2019s already expansive All Things Must Pass project. What\u2019s more, the track was intended to be part of an entire Ronnie Spector comeback album<\/a>, but ended up being the only song to be completed before Phil abandoned the project.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t 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\u2019t so difficult to understand why the track didn\u2019t climb the heights of the Hit Parade.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the Apple Records song certainly had its admirers, perhaps most famously David Bowie, who, on the cusp of his glam-rock breakthrough<\/a> in 1971, fell hard for Ronnie\u2019s emotive vocal.<\/p>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n Such was the extent of Bowie\u2019s adoration for the song that he was determined to record a cover version as a follow-up to 1973\u2019s Pin Ups, but it wasn\u2019t until 2003\u2019s much-maligned Reality album that his version finally saw the light of day. By then, though, even Bowie\u2019s all-encompassing star power couldn\u2019t resurrect the long-forgotten single. <\/p>\n Today, \u2018Try Some, Buy Some\u2019 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. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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