I Need You, a track from the Help! album was George Harrison’s second original song for the Beatles (his first was Don’t Bother Me, and he also contributed You Like Me Too Much to the Help! album).

The Beatles Bible

The second of George Harrison’s songs to be recorded by The Beatles, ‘I Need You’ was featured in the film Help! and appeared on its soundtrack LP.

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Wikipedia

"I Need You" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1965 album Help! It was written by George Harrison, the group's lead guitarist, and was the second composition of his to be released by the Beatles. The track appears in their fil…

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George had written far fewer songs than Lennon and McCartney, and few would argue that Don’t Bother Me and You Like Me Too Much are as strong as typical Beatles’ originals penned by his bandmates. I Need You, by contrast, does not seem at all out of place of the very strong first side of Help! In the track listing it appears in the middle of a sequence bracketed by what the Beatles and George Martin clearly considered the strongest songs (the title track Help! and the other single Ticket To Ride). The other Lennon-McCartney tracks, The Night Before, You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away, Another Girl, You’re Going To Lose That Girl, are all excellent songs, but they are placed lower than I Need You in the current ranking.

With the exception of You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away which represented a bit of a new departure for Lennon (the beginning of Dylan period, almost qualifying as a pastiche), the other (McCartney-led) tracks are still in the girl-boy pop style that the Beatles had all but perfected by this stage of their career. In my view, as reflected in the ranking, I Need You stands up very well alongside them; Harrison’s songwriting had almost caught up with Lennon and McCartney’s.

I say almost because in terms of sheer productivity, Lennon and McCartney were producing far more work at this level, and indeed with their contemporary singles (including McCartney’s sublime Yesterday*) they were already beginning to expand their creative horizons yet further with more ambitious lyrics and ever more inventive sounds and musical ideas. It was this ambition that would eventually take the Beatles from huge but potentially ephemeral icons of pop culture to historically influential artists with an impact comparable to Shakespeare or Mozart.

Still, it might have been the moment to begin to take George’s songwriting contributions more seriously. The opportunity was missed. Harrison was not a part of Lennon and McCartney’s partnership, and from this point onwards his artistic development as a songwriter began to diverge from theirs as he stopped playing catch-up and started to find his own direction. Lennon and McCartney’s fierce creativity absorbed them, and they did not fully recognize his growth and potential. The lack of recognition later fed to tensions around the White Album and Let It Be projects and to his dissatisfaction with the band as an outlet for his best work. When they finally split up, Harrison was able to release a triple-album, All Things Must Pass, which included songs dating back to 1966 and which was a critical and commercial success, outselling several of Lennon and McCartney’s solo albums.