Old Brown Shoe

This song deals in the motifs of jewelry, relationship and love. It uses extended metaphor (old brown shoe = old self), something the Beatles had already used on 'I'm a Loser' 5 years earlier. A single eye rhyme arrives ("imperfect/reject"), and the language is full of nonsense words ('Doo-dah, doo-doo-doo' outro). For anyone keeping count, the title mentions a colour ("brown") and also turns up in the chorus. Fun fact, the line "I'm in love with you" turns up in 4 Beatles songs, among them 'Do You Want to Know a Secret', 'I'll Get You' and 'I'm Happy Just to Dance with You'. The other way round, "thoughtless" turns up in no other Beatles lyric.

'Old Brown Shoe' is a pop and rock piece, and it borrows from ska and blues, where the rhythm runs partly in a ska feel, rare for a Beatles record. The key is C major, and it moves at about 125 BPM. Listen for the bass riff, heavy distorted bass on bridges. Then, listen to a descending bass (chromatic bass arpeggiations) and a vocal ad-lib (scat vocables fade). The harmony takes in a dim7 chord, which five Beatles songs use, such as 'Michelle' and 'Glass Onion'.

The band cut it at EMI Studio 3. Harrison first demoed the song solo on his birthday, then the band cut the basic track in four takes. He added Hammond organ and a new guitar solo two days later. The Hammond RT-3 was played by George Harrison. Eight Beatles recordings use vocal effect in all, this among them. The Beatles began recording 30 songs in 1969, and this was the 13th of them, the 196th record of their career.

The track is Harrison’s, both the writing and the voice, and the record has a role swap on it, McCartney on drums and Harrison on piano and tack piano. The bass is heavily distorted, doubled by the lead guitar through the bridges (The lead guitar you hear is a solo on instrumental verse), a habit that peaked in 1968.

The record was issued as the B-side of the UK number-one single 'The Ballad of John and Yoko'. Did not chart independently in the US. Hey Jude gathered it up in America nine months later, on Capitol, with 10 tracks collecting non-album singles from 1964-1969. This song was the 8th of the 26 records the Beatles released in that year, and the 184th counting from the start.