Hear the isolated vocals for The Beatles song ‘I’m So Tired’
‘I’m So Tired’ is a masterful piece of songwriting by John Lennon, signifying his progression in the role. The days of The Beatles singer writing about chasing girls were over, and instead, he was looking deep inside himself for inspiration.
Work for the track began at 4 pm on October 8th, 1968, at EMI Studios in London, and The Beatles pulled a famous all-nighter to finish it by the following morning. During the same session, they also recorded ‘The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill’, which also appeared on The White Album.
Lennon had penned the song a few months before while The Beatles were in India. While the trip should have been the perfect antidote to his problems and allowed him to recharge his batteries, it ended up having an adverse effect on the songwriter.
Photographer Paul Saltzman, who was at the ashram with the band, later told Rolling Stone: “The weeks the Beatles spent at the ashram were a uniquely calm and creative oasis for them: meditation, vegetarian food and the gentle beauty of the foothills of the Himalayas. There were no fans, no press, no rushing around with busy schedules, and in this freedom, in this single capsule of time, they created more great music than in any similar period in their illustrious careers.”
While that may have been the case for three-quarters of the band, Lennon was anything but relaxed. He was struggling intensely without the company of Yoko Ono, leading to him fighting a bout of insomnia which spawned ‘I’m So Tired’.
“‘I’m So Tired’ was me, in India again,” Lennon later told David Sheff in 1980. “I couldn’t sleep; I’m meditating all day and couldn’t sleep at night. The story is that. One of my favourite tracks. I just like the sound of it, and I sing it well.”
Interestingly, ‘I’m So Tired’ is one of the only songs recorded during the White Album sessions, which all of The Beatles played on simultaneously. However, the rest of the band’s job was merely to bring Lennon’s vision to life and aid his creativity.
In Barry Miles’ book, Many Years From Now, Paul McCartney said: “I’m So Tired’ is very much John’s comment to the world, and it had that very special line, ‘And curse Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a stupid get.’ That’s a classic line, and it’s so John that there’s no doubt that he wrote it. I think it’s 100 per cent John. Being tired was one of his themes; he wrote ‘I’m Only Sleeping’. I think we were all pretty tired, but he chose to write about it.”
Listen to the isolated vocals of ‘I’m So Tired’ below, which brings Lennon’s vulnerable lyrics to the forefront of the track.
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