The Beatles’ Song About a Box of Chocolates

First published in FNL-Guide in July 2025

George Harrison was never one for talking too much. He was the Beatle who sat quietly in the corner, listening to the others dominate the conversation, only to drop a single sharp line with his eyes fixed on the floor, leaving everyone stunned. And yet, the quietest Beatle wrote one of their most intensely “flavorful” songs.

“Savoy Truffle” is the musical embodiment of devouring an entire box of chocolates without a second thought, only to realize moments later that the sugar has won the battle against your teeth.

The song was written in 1968, during the sessions for The White Album, the only double LP the Beatles ever released, and perhaps their most fragmented record. It’s full of great songs but lacks cohesion, since contributions from anyone beyond the main songwriters were minimal. It felt more like a collection of personal manifestos than a true band album.

Harrison found inspiration in his friend Eric Clapton and his obsession with Good News chocolates by Mackintosh. Clapton would demolish box after box with astonishing speed, so Harrison decided to write him a song, a bittersweet ode to indulgence and its dental consequences. As he famously put it, “You’ll have to have them all pulled out after the Savoy Truffle.”

Good News was a classic British chocolate assortment made by Mackintosh, the company best known for its famous toffee. The box included a range of filled chocolates with names like Crème Tangerine, Montelimar, Coconut Fudge, and Savoy Truffle. Hugely popular in the 1960s, it was essentially the British equivalent of a “gift box” — a working-class symbol of excess, the sort of thing no mother wanted you bringing home before dinner.

Harrison literally read the list of flavors on the box and turned it into lyrics, writing with the irony of a man who knew that everything beginning with caramel ends with a dentist appointment.

With lines that sound like a patisserie menu written under the influence of LSD, “Crème tangerine and Montelimar / A ginger sling with pineapple heart” — Savoy Truffle hides a bitter truth beneath its glossy pop surface: too much pleasure always leaves a mark. It’s no coincidence that the song is drenched in saxophones, six of them, in fact, which Harrison instructed to be recorded as “dirty” as possible. He wanted distortion, a sound that crackled like a bad tooth biting into chocolate.

If food had a soundtrack, Savoy Truffle would be the track playing after you’ve finished a decadent, sugar-heavy dessert, the kind that fills you with both guilt and bliss. But it’s also more than that. It’s one of those rare songs that trigger taste without imagery. It doesn’t just describe the chocolates, it orchestrates them. Montelimar, a French nougat, isn’t just a word but a texture; the Ginger Sling isn’t just a drink but a clash of harmonies.

The line “You know that what you eat you are” lands with ironic weight. Deeply influenced by Hindu philosophy and fasting, as were most of the Beatles at the time, Harrison chose to express it through a sugary overdose.

You could call all this excessive, even quaint. But that’s because the song wasn’t written to be beautiful, it was written to be truthful. That kind of honesty set Harrison apart from the rest of the Beatles. While they searched for the perfect song about the truth of the universe, he wrote about his friend’s weaknesses, and, in this case, about chocolate.

Savoy Truffle isn’t just a song about food. In an era obsessed with “guilt-free” desserts and sugar-free sweeteners, it speaks to those who understand what it means to eat with guilt, to love excess, to know it’s bad for you, and to keep going anyway. There’s nothing elegant about it. There’s no agave syrup, stevia, maple extract, or xylitol here. It’s the musical equivalent of a dessert that doesn’t belong in a wellness bakery, but makes your night anyway, a true guilty pleasure.

I’m not sure if the song still feels relevant 56 years later. In a time when we hide the obvious whenever it’s convenient, Savoy Truffle could easily be playing in every dentist’s waiting room, while you sit there, a Dubai chocolate tucked in your pocket, ready to record your TikTok review the moment you get home.