"Circles" was one of several songs that George Harrison wrote in Rishikesh, India,[1][2] when he and his Beatles bandmates were attending Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation course in the spring of 1968.

[3][4] Aside from providing an opportunity to progress with meditation,[5] the two-month stay marked the start of Harrison's return to the guitar after two years of studying the Indian sitar, partly under the tutelage of Ravi Shankar.

[16][17] Theologian Dale Allison highlights "Circles" as the only Harrison song to use the term "reincarnate", and he also comments on the composer's use of the word "soul" "in its proper metaphysical sense".

[18][nb 2] Harrison also quotes from the Chinese philosopher and author Lao-Tse,[21] whose work Tao Te Ching inspired his 1968 composition "The Inner Light", which was released as the B-side of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna" single while the band were away in Rishikesh.

[51] In his book Revolution in the Head, Ian MacDonald identifies the instrument as a harmonium and writes that, rather than performing the song alone, Harrison was "shadowed by a tentative … bass-line" from Paul McCartney.

[54] This partly reflected Harrison's junior position to John Lennon and McCartney as a songwriter in the Beatles;[51][55] in an interview conducted later in 1968,[56] he also stated that he was enjoying contributing more on guitar again and being a "rock 'n' roll star".

[57] With the band's songwriting output at an unprecedentedly high level,[58][59] Harrison's "Not Guilty" was similarly left off the album,[60] even though the group completed a studio recording of that track in London.

[77] The backing musicians included keyboard players Billy Preston, Jon Lord and Mike Moran;[1] Harrison also played synthesizer,[78] in addition to bass[79] and slide guitar.

[80] Acknowledging the close friendship between the two near-neighbours, Leng cites Lord's presence on the track as indicative of a preference for locally sourced contributors and "trusted pals" when Harrison made Gone Troppo.

[81][nb 6] As another factor in the album's creation, Harrison felt increasingly removed from contemporary musical trends and more involved with his film company, HandMade,[87] whose recent successes included Terry Gilliam's 1981 fantasy adventure Time Bandits.

[88][89] While viewing "Circles" as "a throwback to the early days of enlightenment in the 1960s", Leng writes that the "ponderous, stuttering, meditative pace and bizarre, circular melodic structure" of the song evokes "the feeling of being transported to one of the parallel realities" depicted in Gilliam's film.

[1] The album's arrival coincided with heavy marketing of the Beatles' past work and a new television documentary,[93] as part of the twentieth anniversary celebrations of the band's debut single, "Love Me Do".

[96] Author Alan Clayson comments that the song's "sense of once more going through the old routine" seemingly reflected the artist's disenchantment after Warner's had rejected part of the content of his previous album, Somewhere in England.

[107] Discussing the reception to Gone Troppo in their book Eight Arms to Hold You, Chip Madinger and Mark Easter identify "Circles" as the only track "reflecting weightier matters" on what was otherwise Harrison's "frothiest" collection of songs to date, and they conclude: "Sadly, a decent album was lost in the shuffle of the rapidly changing marketplace of the early '80's.

"[108] In his contemporary review for Musician magazine, Roy Trakin wrote that, following Lennon's murder two years before, Harrison's "tortured honesty" undermined the album's "attempt to heal those psychic wounds with calm, offhanded music".

[51] Author John Winn dismisses "Circles" as "a depressing number that makes 'Blue Jay Way' sound like a Little Richard freakout",[50] while Ian MacDonald describes it as "a typically perceptive, if deeply gloomy, song about karma".

"[30] By contrast, Simon Leng admires "Circles" as "one of [its] composer's most complex pieces", and he pairs the song with "Beware of Darkness" as "a study in Harrison's unique harmonic sense".