Flashmob Performs The Beatles’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ in Madrid Unemployment Office

One of my favorite songs comes from the Quiet Beatle, George Harrison. A tune that can rival anything from the Lennon/McCartney songbook, Here Comes the Sun was written in 1969, during a fairly bleak time. Harrison sets the scene is his 1980 book, I, Me, Mine. He recalls:

“Here Comes the Sun” was written at the time when Apple [the Beatles’ record label] was getting like school, where we had to go and be businessmen: ‘Sign this’ and ‘sign that’. Anyway, it seems as if winter in England goes on forever, by the time spring comes you really deserve it. So one day I decided I was going to sag off Apple and I went over to Eric Clapton’s house. The relief of not having to go see all those dopey accountants was wonderful, and I walked around the garden with one of Eric’s acoustic guitars and wrote “Here Comes the Sun.”

It’s a song about getting through the darkness — personal, professional, seasonal, etc. And it’s simply a perfect pick for the flashmob performance you’ll witness above. Unlike so many other feel-good flashmob performances staged in Europe (see below), this one takes place in a dreary unemployment office in Spain (Madrid, to be precise) where unemployment hovers around 26% and homelessness is on the rise. It doesn’t try to sugarcoat life in Spain. It just provides a little ray of hope.

This video was shot back in January. According to a recent IMF report, conditions will remain difficult in Spain for years to come, but some new data hints that the worst may be over. Or so we hope.

Related Content:

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Guitar Solo by George Harrison

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Movingly Flashmobbed in Spain

Copenhagen Philharmonic Plays Ravel’s Bolero at Train Station

Eric Clapton’s Isolated Guitar Track From the Classic Beatles Song, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ (1968)


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