I Me Mine

The motifs it works with are social commentary, spirituality and philosophy, and the writing is observational, watched rather than lived. The Beatles had written about the spirituality motif before, on 'The Word' and 'Tomorrow Never Knows', 5 years before. It uses anaphora (verses begin 'All through the day/night', 'All I can hear'), most at home in their 1968 songs. A multi-syllabic rhyme arrives once, "leaving/weaving". The title arrives in the chorus, and the language is built on a limited vocabulary and sparse.

'I Me Mine' is a folk rock song, written in A minor and taken at about 108 BPM, with blues influences. It brings in string players, something the Beatles started 5 years before and went on doing for 28 songs. Mid-song, the meter shifts under it. It reaches for an m7♭5 chord, which five Beatles songs use, and McCartney reached for it more than the others, on four of them. You can hear a descending bass. Coincidence or not, its F → Am → E7/G♯ → Am chord progression is the move 'Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!' makes as B♭ → Dm → A → Dm. As a matter of detail, this song is the last of the 37 Beatles songs to lean on folk.

The tape rolled at EMI Studio 2, basic track recorded in 16 takes by Harrison, McCartney and Starr. Spector later extended the song by 51 seconds and added an orchestral and choir overdub. It was in and out of the studio from 3 January to 1 April 1970. Lennon is on the Epiphone Casino ES-230TD, his guitar, something they started 5 years before and went on doing for 55 songs. Only four Beatles recordings have been through wall of sound, and this is one. This was the last song the Beatles recorded while they were still a band, the 214th of their career, and three more followed from Lennon's demos.

Harrison both wrote and sang it, and there is a role swap on it, McCartney on acoustic guitar. It was made without all four Beatles (no Lennon, on holiday in Denmark). Violin, viola, cello, trumpet and trombone were brought in for it. Phil Spector, the producer, is credited with an orchestral overdub and final mix. It is the last Beatles session Glyn Johns engineered.

Like most of the catalogue it was an album track, out on May 8, 1970 with Let It Be. This song was the 6th of the 12 records the Beatles released in that year, and the 208th of their career.