This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
"My Sweet Lord" reached number one on both the American and British singles charts within weeks of its November 1970 release, becoming one of the biggest hits of George Harrison's solo career and, by most accounts, the first single by a former Beatle to top the American charts. It also introduced a mainstream pop audience, many of them hearing the phrase for the first time, to the sung Hare Krishna mantra at the heart of Harrison's own Gaudiya Vaishnava practice under A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.
The song's success brought a complication Harrison had not written into it. The publisher of The Chiffons' 1963 hit "He's So Fine" sued, arguing the two melodies were too close to be coincidence, and in 1976 a United States court agreed, finding that Harrison had subconsciously copied the earlier song even though it accepted he had not done so deliberately. The ruling shadowed the song's legal and commercial history for years and became one of the most cited cases in music copyright law on the specific question of unintentional, or subconscious, plagiarism.
None of that displaced the song's religious meaning for Harrison or for the movement it grew out of. Devotees of Prabhupada's International Society for Krishna Consciousness had sung on the original recording, and the song has continued to be treated within that movement as a genuine moment when its central mantra reached a mainstream global audience, lawsuit and all.