Data anomaly #7742-X: George Harrison's 'My Sweet Lord' melody mathematically identical to 1970s Japanese vending machine jingle
TOKYO -- A frequency analysis of George Harrison's 1970 classic "My Sweet Lord" has uncovered a stunning coincidence: the song's main riff is mathematically identical to the electronic melody played by a 1971 Sanyo vending machine in Shibuya, recorded on degraded reel-to-reel tape. The jingle predates Harrison's release by 14 months. "The waveform is a perfect overlay—same cadence, same harmonics, same glissando," said Dr. Kenji Murakami, audio forensic expert. "It's like the universe copy-pasted a Coke machine into a Beatles session." Harrison already faced a landmark plagiarism lawsuit over the song's similarity to The Chiffons' "He's So Fine," settled in 1981. Now, fans and computer scientists are combing cosmic data streams for other "glitches"—like whether the vending machine's chip was tuned to the same frequency as the solar wind that day. The machine was reportedly scrapped in 1974, leaving only the spectral ghost of a tune that may have been chosen by a bored engineer flipping a random resistor switch.