Reception
"Isn’t It a Pity" remains one of Harrison’s most popular songs with critics and fans alike. Allmusic calls it "deeply moving and powerful", while in their book on the solo Beatles' recording history, Eight Arms to Hold You, Chip Madinger and Mark Easter declare: "If any George Harrison song can be called 'majestic', 'Isn't It a Pity' would be the one." In his December 1970 album review for the NME, Alan Smith described it as a track that "catches the mood of aching tolerance of pain, which Harrison can do so well" and "a ballad which will stand out from the album with the passing of the years".
Simon Leng identifies the song as musically "sumptuous" and praises Harrison's inventive melody and "unique" use of notes beyond the key signature, as well as John Barham’s “evocative, suspended orchestration". He notes also the similarity of their combined musical counterbalance with elements of Indian raga, in the number of swaras (tones) in both ascending and descending scales. To Leng, "Isn't It a Pity" is the "pivotal song", the "essence" of All Things Must Pass, encapsulating the album’s struggle between “gospel ecstasy and the failure of human relationships”.
Writing in the late '70s, Nicholas Schaffner noted the song's "towering simplicity" and the "endlessly repetitive fade-out that somehow manages to be hypnotic instead of boring". Like Schaffner, a number of commentators have remarked on the significance of "Isn't It a Pity" in the wider, Beatles context, starting with the song's length: 7:10 – just a second under "Hey Jude". Ben Gerson, in his 1971 Rolling Stone review, described the song as a "lament … whose beginning is the broken thirds of John's 'I Am the Walrus' and whose end is the decadent, exultant last half of Paul's 'Hey Jude'". On this point, Leng adds: "Ever bittersweet, 'Isn't It a Pity' records the last dying echoes of the Beatles."
Elliot Huntley has complained of the song's enforced period in hibernation: " simply beggars belief that the track was rejected by Martin, Lennon and McCartney − three men whose reputations rested on their ability to spot a good tune when they heard one." Huntley views "Isn't It a Pity" as worthy of "fully fledged standard" status, with Barham's "soaring" strings and Harrison's "sublime" slide guitar combining to take the song "into the heavens, where it stays".
In 2010, AOL Radio listeners voted "Isn't It a Pity" seventh in a poll to find the ten best post-Beatles George Harrison songs. Both Eric Clapton and Tom Petty have named "Isn't It a Pity" among their favourite two Harrison compositions, Petty calling the song "a masterpiece".
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