I'm Looking Through You

The lyric puts its case as a question ('Where did you go?', 'What did I know?'), and it touches the motifs of truth and autobiography, a habit that peaked in 1968. It uses personification ('Love has a nasty habit of disappearing'), and the writing draws on Bob Dylan.

'I'm Looking Through You' is a folk rock song in A♭ major, a key the Beatles used 3 times in all (the earliest of them is 'A Taste of Honey' 2 years before). It moves at about 86 BPM, and you can hear a melodic bass (descending counterpoint under I-IV-ii rise). Also, the harmony reaches for a 7sus4 chord, which nine Beatles songs use, such as 'We Can Work It Out' and 'A Hard Day's Night'.

This song was recorded at EMI Studio 1, three attempts in two-and-a-half weeks before Take 4 became the master. The US stereo mix preserves two false guitar starts. McCartney reached for the Epiphone Casino ES-230TD, his guitar. The kit in the room included the Ludwig Super Classic, Starr's own kit since 1964. Double tracked vocal was used in making the record, a habit that peaked in 1964. 1965 brought 33 songs, and this was the 27th of them, the 96th record of their career.

McCartney wrote it and took the lead vocal, and the record has a role swap on it, Starr on organ. It has only the four of them playing on it, as on most of what they recorded in 1965.

The public first heard it when Rubber Soul appeared on December 3, 1965. It reached America three days later, on the Capitol album Rubber Soul (US), with a different tracklist from the UK. This is the Beatles' 96th record, and the 27th of the 33 they released in that year.