What does While My Guitar Gently Weeps mean?

Beatles: While My Guitar Gently Weeps Meaning

Album cover for While My Guitar Gently Weeps album cover

Song Released: 1968


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While My Guitar Gently Weeps Lyrics

I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps
I don't know why nobody told you how to unfold your love
I don't know how someone...

  1. 1TOP RATED

    #1 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
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    Jun 11th 2009 !⃝

    okay so i think this song is definitelly refleted upon how george feels at ther time. He is probably upset that the band is falling apart and everything is happening and even though he is sad it doesnt matter the world keeps on turning and he can't do anything about it

  2. 2TOP RATED

    #2 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
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    Mar 23rd 2012 !⃝

    I don't think this song has anything to do with George's feelings about the Beatles.

    I'm pretty sure he was well into learning about Buddhism at this point. Here's my take:

    This song is a metaphor to express his feelings about existentialism. His guitar is the only tool he has to fight the oligarchy he saw. And yet that tool wasn't enough. He's speaking of humanity and the powers that control the average person. But he alludes to the general nature of man to be kind. The love that's sleeping. He's speaking about all the goodness that we collectively have. At the same time, he realizes the forces that control us.

    This is a very moving song at first blush. But after closer examination, it's insightful and heartbreaking at the same time.

  3. 3TOP RATED

    #3 top rated interpretation:
    bgnagain
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    Mar 22nd 2009 !⃝

    Having been in a band and been through the same experience (albiet to an obviously lesser degree of social significance, lol) it's obvious to me, especially when reading his fuller length demo, that it's how George felt being a part of something so important, so meaningful, so huge, and so personal, and then watching it crumble to pieces around him. Watching egos clash with arguements painful to hear, watching what was once a profound embodiment of young love and joy be reduced to dust by fear and loathing and jealousy and self-importance and pettiness, frustration and anger. An inside look at the most important band ever known falling apart. Must have been hell for a man so emersed in spiritual peace. Ironic as well when you consider how the two guys writing and singing about love, demonstrating and declaring and advocating peace, couldn't stay together. I can see Ringo and Gearge drifting off to get stoned and vent their frustrations about Paul & John's bullshit. Anyway, the damn song makes me cry like a baby because I've sorta been there. In my case it happened just as we were getting signed, right on the cusp of "making it" in the 80's rock scene, so it's particularly frustrating and sad.

    whanh
    .

  4. anonymous
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    May 4th 2022 !⃝

    George was a spiritual man. The Beatles had just returned from their trip to India where George had heard many new spiritual ideas. It is well known that Paul and John were not interested in the trip and were arguing all the time, bringing into question, the longevity of the band. Returning home w/these conflicting positive and negative experiences in mind, riffing on the "gently weeps" pick-up from the book, I believe he began to write about the friction between Paul and John, but soon saw the metaphor with the larger human condition and continued writing with that in mind. Or, it's just about the band. LOL!

  5. anonymous
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    Aug 1st 2021 !⃝

    In my opinion this song states that mr George sing about his guitar falling asleep because there wasn’t enough guitar playing in Paul and John songs in a interview with Paul on Howard stern Paul said George wanted more guitar riffs on hey Jude and other songs very underrated guitarist is George in the shadow of John and Paul I look to the floor and I notice it needs sweeping while my guitar gently weeps. In the studio because his guitar was sleeping

  6. anonymous
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    Sep 25th 2019 !⃝

    He talks about universal love and about a personal love that both fail.

  7. anonymous
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    Feb 23rd 2019 !⃝

    The authors are George, John and Paul. Who contributed what? As the Beatles reached a point of maturity, they must have all seen how their lives and the band and how the world was going as reflective. They were in show business and what began as fun changed sadly into marketing and would soon end in crass friviolity.

  8. anonymous
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    Feb 3rd 2019 !⃝

    The song "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" as an exercise in randomness inspired by the Chinese I Ching. The song conveys his dismay at the world's unrealised potential for universal love, which he refers to as "the love there that's sleeping".

  9. anonymous
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    Jun 5th 2018 !⃝

    Sadness.

  10. anonymous
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    Aug 4th 2016 !⃝

    I took it as a song of people not one person and that it could relate to slavery because of the second and third verses. but then I found out that the group was breaking up so I guess its a love song about the group and their flaws.

  11. anonymous
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    Jan 19th 2015 !⃝

    George was reading something that said that whatever happens is supposed to happen and there areno coincedences. So George pulled out a random book from his mother's bookcase and opened a random page and randomly pointed out "gently weeps". I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping. The Beatles are the floor. They started off well, but as the time passed, they started to drift apart and eventually broke up. If the floor needs sweeping, then stuff happened and started breaking things up, and no one bothers to sweep it. No one bothers to try and patch it up. I look at the world and I notice it's turning means that time passes quickly and, again no one bothers to patch things up and the world just turns and time just goes on.

  12. anonymous
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    Jan 6th 2013 !⃝

    While my guitar gentley weeps is a metaphor. The guitar is his heart. And it weeps,because even though people are awake they are not enlightened. So I look at you all (not being in the moment) which in eastern religions cause pain, stress, sad ect.. We cause are own suffering by not being in the NOW . In western religion GOD says you hold the keys to the kingdom. A child understands this more then an adult,because children are in the moment no stress!!! the keys to the kingdom means be in the NOW and you will have peace of mind!! Dont let your guitar weep...

  13. GentlyWeeps
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    Nov 22nd 2011 !⃝

    It's a vision of the world seeing through George's solitary scope. It's the view of chaos from outside looking in.

  14. anonymous
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    Aug 4th 2011 !⃝

    The music was so beautiful, and the sadness of the inevitable break-up makes his guitar weep. So sad, so out of control.
    Myrtle

  15. anonymous
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    Apr 7th 2011 !⃝

    I always thought it was about a prostitute.

  16. anonymous
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    Jan 5th 2011 !⃝

    I think that it is George's perspective when there is disaggreements. It seems to me that during mch of the song it is coming from a bystander or in this case George, durig that time he wishes to play because he knows the potential.

  17. anonymous
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    Jul 26th 2010 !⃝

    i think it IS about john and paul becoming further and further apart.when he says in the first verse "i look at you all see the love thats sleeping,i look at the floor and i see it needs sweeping."meens they are arguing and its gone soooo long he drifts off and looks at the floorand is just so annoyed

  18. anonymous
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    Apr 10th 2010 !⃝

    It's about the death of Martin Luther King Jr.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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