"Try Some, Buy Some" is a song written by the English rock musician George Harrison that was first released in April 1971 as a single by the American singer Ronnie Spector, formerly the lead vocalist of the Ronettes.

The lyrics document his sudden perception of God amid the temptations of the material world, including recreational drugs, and serve as an account of a religious epiphany.

Among the varied opinions on the Living in the Material World track, some focus on Harrison's struggle to sing in a higher key than he preferred and view its dense production as being out of place on the album; others admire the lyrics and melody, and recognise a seductive quality in the song.

George Harrison's song "Try Some, Buy Some" dates back to the recording sessions for his 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass,[1] and was one of several tracks left over from that project.

[5] Harrison biographer Simon Leng describes the tune as "the most extreme example" of its composer's "circular melodic" style, "seeming to snake through an unending series of harmonic steps".

[23] In addition to the song echoing the "lost and then found" message of many Christian conversions, Allison writes, "Try Some, Buy Some" demonstrates Harrison's incarnation among the "twice-born" in Bhagavad Gita terminology.

[32] Ronnie's signing to the Beatles' Apple record label was a condition of Spector's deal with the company,[33] one that Harrison and Lennon, as avowed fans of the Ronettes,[34] were happy to honour.

[39] The situation had been forced on her by Spector's semi-retirement in 1966,[39] following the failure in America of Ike & Tina Turner's single "River Deep – Mountain High", a production he considered his masterpiece.

[41][51][nb 2] The planned comeback album ended due to the same erratic behaviour from Spector that had hindered work on All Things Must Pass;[33][54] in both instances, Madinger and Easter describe it as a "health"-related issue.

[55] According to Harrison in I, Me, Mine: "we only did four or five tracks before Phil fell over ..."[9][nb 3] Of those songs, Spector chose "Try Some, Buy Some" to complete for release as a single by Ronnie,[9] rather than the more obviously commercial "You".

[59] [Spector makes the strings and mandolins] sweep and soar in great blocks of sound, pirouetting around each other like a corps de ballet in slow motion.

"[39][nb 6] Billboard magazine's reviewer described "Try Some, Buy Some" as a "powerful production ballad" that had "all the ingredients to break through big", while stating that Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton had contributed to the record.

[68] Cash Box said the "mere snatch of a song" was transformed into a "mighty four-minute track by virtue of an astounding production from Phil Spector and George Harrison", and that their achievement was then "sentimentally upstaged" by Ronnie reprising the wordless vocalisations of the Ronettes' "Be My Baby".

"[70] In his contemporary review for The Times, Richard Williams deemed it "a monster piece of orchestral pop, the equal of almost anything Spector produced in his great period", but concluded: "sadly it will probably prove to be too 'weird' for today's market.

[33][nb 7] As with "River Deep – Mountain High",[72] the single's lack of success was one of the "crushing disappointments" of Spector's career, author Nicholas Schaffner wrote in 1977, the producer having "[outdone] himself to transform it into a masterpiece of his patented 'wall of sound' production".

[77] By contrast, Dave Thompson, citing Ronnie's later recollections, says that she was "stunned" by the single's failure since Spector's "golden touch" had returned and "Try Some, Buy Some" was "as exquisite as anything he had cut with John and George".

"[86][nb 8] In 1999, however, she named the song among her five favourite recordings from her career, along with "Say Goodbye to Hollywood", "Take Me Home Tonight", the title track of her 1999 EP She Talks to Rainbows, and "Be My Baby".

"[87] Reviewing the Come and Get It compilation for BBC Music, Mike Diver comments on the overindulgence behind many of the Beatles' Apple projects but views "Try Some, Buy Some" as being "worthy of praise".

[41][90] The bootleg also includes a drunken jam session in which Harrison and Spector play snippets of cover versions on acoustic guitars, with occasional vocals by Ronnie.

[41][nb 9] Following the abandoned Ronnie Spector sessions in 1971, Harrison's relief effort for the refugees of the Bangladesh Liberation War kept his musical activities to a minimum for over a year.

[5] After starting work on Living in the Material World in October that year, Harrison revisited Ronnie's recording of the song, rather than creating a new version,[97] and replaced her vocal with his own.

[101] Before then, he had based the musical backing of his 1971 single "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" (also co-produced by Spector) on that of "Try Some Buy Some",[102] in particular, asking that his acoustic guitarists replicate the mandolin parts.

[108] Reflecting the album content,[109][110] Tom Wilkes's design for the record's face labels contrasted a devout spiritual existence with life in the material world, by featuring a painting of Krishna and his warrior prince Arjuna on side one and a picture of a Mercedes stretch limousine on the reverse.

'"[115] In Melody Maker, Michael Watts wrote that the song fitted the album-wide description of Harrison's personal journey to "musical iconographer" status from his Beatle past.

[116] Five years after this, in an album review for Mojo magazine, Snow described "Try Some, Buy Some" as "an anti-heroin song so seductively melodic it might induce the opposite effect".

[119] Leng bemoans Harrison's "straining" vocal on the track and "banks of trilling 'Long and Winding Road' mandolins" that are at odds with the more subtle mood found elsewhere on the album.

[120] Ian Inglis similarly finds the song "out of place" and says that the combination of Spector's "unconvincing" production style and Harrison's singing make it "one of his least impressive performances".

[121] Reviewing the 2014 Apple Years Harrison reissues, for the Lexington Herald-Leader, Walter Tunis includes "Try Some, Buy Some" among the "stunners" on Material World and describes the song as an "achingly beautiful awakening anthem".

[125] Promoting the release in an interview with Paul Du Noyer of The Word, Bowie said that whereas Harrison had "a belief in some kind of system", his own experience continued to be a "daunting spiritual search".