DESCRIPTION:
"Living In The Material World" was the title of George Harrison's fourth studio album, Living In The Material World, which was released in the spring of 1973.

I've done numerous videos for tracks from this album so not much left to say about it, except to repeat; after all these years, it's beauty still strikes me...and if the second US single "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" hadn't been cancelled (who gets credit for that stupid decision?! Surely not George?)....the album would have been able to gain more of the attention it deserved.

Stephen Leng describes the record as "one of the most keenly anticipated discs of the decade" and its unveiling "a major event". Among expectant music critics, Stephen Holden began his highly favorable review in Rolling Stone with the words "At last it's here", before hailing the new Harrison album as a "pop classic" and a "profoundly seductive record". "Happily, the album is not just a commercial event," he wrote, "it is the most concise, universally conceived work by a former Beatle since John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band." Billboard magazine noted the twin themes found throughout the album – "the Beatles and their mish-mash" versus a "spiritual undercoat" – and described Harrison's vocals as "first-rate".

Music critic Graham Reid remarked that "Harrison is not a great wordsmith but he is a superb musician. Everything flows, everything interweaves. His melodies are so superb they take care of everything …"

Biographers Carr and Tyler lauded Harrison's "superb and accomplished slide-guitar breaks", and the solos on "Give Me Love", "The Lord Loves the One", "The Light That Has Lighted the World" and "Living in the Material World" have each been identified as exemplary and among the finest of Harrison's career.

In his book The Beatles Apart (1981), Woffinden wrote: "Those who carped at the lyrics, or at Harrison himself, missed a great deal of the music, much of which was exceptionally fine." Woffinden described the album as "a very good one".

In the decades following its release, Living in the Material World gained a reputation as "a forgotten blockbuster" and an underrated masterpiece.

Reviewing the 2014 reissue, Blogcritics' Chaz Lipp writes that "this chart-topping classic is, in terms of production, arguably preferable to its predecessor", adding: "The sinewy 'Sue Me, Sue You Blues,' galloping title track, and soaring 'Don't Let Me Wait Too Long' rank right alongside Harrison's best work." Classic Rock reviewer, Paul Trynka writes: "All these years on, it's his most overtly spiritual album that sparkles today … The well-known songs, such as 'Sue Me, Sue You Blues", stand up well, but it's the more restrained tracks – 'Don't Let Me Wait Too Long', 'Who Can See It' – that entrance: gorgeous pop songs, all the more forceful for their restraint."

Leng has named the album as his personal favorite of all of Harrison's solo albums. According to Leng, with its combination of a defiant "protest" song in "The Day the World Gets 'Round", the anti-stardom "The Lord Loves the One", and "perfect pop confections" in "Give Me Love" and "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long", Living in the Material World was the last album to capture the same clear-sighted, Utopian spirit that characterized the 1960s.

Eder likewise welcomes Material World's bold idealism, saying: "Even in the summer of 1973, after years of war and strife and disillusionment, some of us were still sort of looking – to borrow a phrase from a Lennon–McCartney song – or hoping to get from them something like 'the word' that would make us free. And George, God love him, had the temerity to actually oblige ..."

[Lyrics]
I'm living in the material world
Living in the material world

can't say what I'm doing here
But I hope to see much clearer,
after living in the material world

I got born into the material world
Getting worn out in the material world
Use my body like a car,
Taking me both near and far
Met my friends all in the material world

Met them all there in the material world
John and Paul here in the material world
Though we started out quite poor
We got 'Richie' on a tour
Got caught up in the material world

From the Spiritual Sky,
Such sweet memories have I
To the Spiritual Sky
How I pray
Yes I pray
that I won't get lost
or go astray

As I'm fated for the material world
Get frustrated in the material world
Senses never gratified
Only swelling like a tide
That could drown me in the
material world

From the Spiritual Sky,
Such sweet memories have I
To the Spiritual Sky
How I pray
Yes I pray
that I won't get lost
or go astray

While I'm living in the material world
Not much 'giving' in the material world
Got a lot of work to do
Try to get a message through
And get back out of this material world

I'm living in the material world
Living in the material world
I hope to get out of this place
by the LORD SRI KRSNA'S GRACE
My salvation from the material world