[3] The recording features producer Phil Spector's Wall of Sound treatment and heralded the arrival of Harrison's slide guitar technique, which one biographer described as "musically as distinctive a signature as the mark of Zorro".

Later in the 1970s, "My Sweet Lord" was at the centre of a heavily publicised copyright infringement suit due to its alleged similarity to the Ronnie Mack song "He's So Fine", a 1963 hit for the New York girl group the Chiffons.

George Harrison began writing "My Sweet Lord" in December 1969, when he, Billy Preston and Eric Clapton were in Copenhagen, Denmark,[4][5] as guest artists on Delaney & Bonnie's European tour.

Religious academic Joshua Greene, one of the Radha Krishna Temple devotees in 1970, translates the lines as follows: "I offer homage to my guru, who is as great as the creator Brahma, the maintainer Vishnu, the destroyer Shiva, and who is the very energy of God.

[12][39][nb 2] Preston's version of "My Sweet Lord" differs from Harrison's later reading in that the "hallelujah" refrain appears from the start of the song and, rather than the full mantra section, the words "Hare Krishna" are sung only twice throughout the whole track.

[54] Having assembled a large cast of backing musicians for the sessions, Harrison initially recorded five takes of "My Sweet Lord" with just acoustic guitars and harmonium before changing to a full band arrangement.

[58] Evans' diary entry for 28 May lists the players on "My Sweet Lord" as Harrison, Eric Clapton and Badfinger guitarists Pete Ham and Joey Molland, all on acoustic guitars; Gary Brooker on piano; Bobby Whitlock on harmonium; Klaus Voormann on bass; Starr on drums; and Alan White on tambourine.

[39][51] Both sides of the North American picture sleeve consisted of a Barry Feinstein photo of Harrison taken through a window at his recently purchased Friar Park home, with some of the estate's trees reflected in the glass.

[97] The release coincided with a period when religion and spirituality had become a craze among Western youth, as songs by Radha Krishna Temple and adaptations of the Christian hymns "Oh Happy Day" and "Amazing Grace" were all worldwide hits,[98] even as church attendance continued to decline.

[101][nb 7] According to music historian Andrew Grant Jackson, the single's impact surpassed that of any other song in the era's spiritual revival, and Harrison's Indian-influenced slide playing, soon heard also in recordings by Lennon, Starr and Badfinger, was one of the most distinctive sounds of the early 1970s.

[116] Among these writers,[122] Don Heckman of The New York Times predicted that "My Sweet Lord" / "Isn't It a Pity" would soon top the US charts and credited Harrison with having "generated some of the major changes in the style and substance of the Beatles" through his championing of Indian music and Eastern religion.

[123] In a January 1971 review for NME, Derek Johnson expressed surprise at Apple's delay in releasing the single in the UK, and stated: "In my opinion, this record – finally and irrevocably – establishes George as a talent equivalent to either Lennon or McCartney.

He deemed "My Sweet Lord" "the most instant and the most commercial" track on All Things Must Pass, adding that the single release was long overdue and a solution for those put off by the high price of the triple LP.

[127] On 10 February 1971, Bright Tunes Music Corporation filed suit against Harrison and associated organisations (including Harrisongs, Apple Records and BMI), alleging copyright infringement of the late Ronnie Mack's song "He's So Fine".

[129] It later came to light that Klein had renewed his efforts to purchase the ailing company, now solely for himself, and to that end was supplying Bright Tunes with insider details regarding "My Sweet Lord"'s sales figures and copyright value.

[128] Author Alan Clayson has described the plagiarism suit as "the most notorious civil action of the decade",[135] saying that the "extremity" of the proceedings were provoked by a combination of the commercial success of Harrison's single and the intervention of "litigation-loving Mr Klein".

[16] Some observers have considered this unreasonable and unduly harsh,[140] since it underplayed the unique elements of Harrison's recording – the universal spiritual message of its lyrics, the signature guitar hook, and its production – and ignored the acclaim his album received in its own right.

[149] The 1960s soul hits "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)" and "Rescue Me", as well as his own composition "You", are all name-checked in the lyrics,[150] as if to demonstrate the point that, as he later put it, "99 per cent of the popular music that can be heard is reminiscent of something or other.

Woffinden commented that, as of 1981, no comparable action over copyright infringement had been launched despite the continuation of this tradition; he cited the appropriation of aspects of Harrison's 1966 song "Taxman" in the Jam's recent number 1 hit "Start!"

[143] AllMusic's Richie Unterberger says of the song's international popularity: "'My Sweet Lord' has a quasi-religious feel, but nevertheless has enough conventional pop appeal to reach mainstream listeners who may or may not care to dig into the spiritual lyrical message.

[162] Ian Inglis highlights the combination of Harrison's "evident lack of artifice" and Spector's "excellent production", such that "My Sweet Lord" can be heard "as a prayer, a love song, an anthem, a contemporary gospel track, or a piece of perfect pop".

[164][nb 12] Writing in The New York Review of Books in 2013, author and neurologist Oliver Sacks cited the case when stating his preference for the word cryptomnesia over plagiarism, which he said was "suggestive of crime and deceit".

[6] Jayson Greene of Pitchfork writes that the court ruling of subconscious plagiarism "could be a good euphemism for 'pop songwriting'" generally, and the episode was "doubly ironic considering Harrison's intrinsic generosity as an artist".

[171] In a 2001 review, Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune said that "My Sweet Lord" serves as the entrance to Spector's "cathedral of sound" on All Things Must Pass, adding that although Harrison lost the lawsuit, the song's "towering majesty ... remains undiminished".

[97] In 2009, pop culture critic Roy Trakin commented that if music fans were in doubt as to Harrison's enduring influence, they should "listen to Wilco's latest album for a song called 'You Never Know', which is even closer to 'My Sweet Lord' than that one was to 'He's So Fine', with its slide guitar lines practically an homage to the original.

[185] Executive produced by Dhani Harrison and David Zonshine, it was written and directed by Lance Bangs, and stars Mark Hamill, Vanessa Bayer and Fred Armisen as secret agents investigating a mysterious phenomenon around Los Angeles.

The video features cameos from many celebrities – including Patton Oswalt, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Ringo Starr, Jeff Lynne, Joe Walsh, Dhani and Olivia Harrison – and ends with Armisen and Bayer's characters solving the mystery by hearing the song for the first time on their car radio.

[185][186] On 26 December 1975, Harrison made a guest appearance on his friend Eric Idle's BBC2 comedy show Rutland Weekend Television,[187][188] sending up his serious public image, and seemingly about to perform "My Sweet Lord".

[199] Of the extended slide-guitar break on "My Sweet Lord (2000)", Leng writes: "[Harrison] had never made so clear a musical statement that his signature bottleneck sound was as much his tool for self-expression as his vocal cords.

[203] In November 2011, a demo of "My Sweet Lord", with Harrison backed by just Voormann and Starr,[204][205] was included on the deluxe edition CD accompanying the British DVD release of Scorsese's Living in the Material World documentary.