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The Beatles: "I'm So Tired"
It’s been a while since I wrote about a Beatles song here, but today feels like a good day for another one — specifically, this one. After waking up with a sore throat Saturday morning, I had a full-on head and chest cold 24 hours later. As you might imagine, I still feel lousy today — and what better song to express feeling sick and tired than “I’m So Tired”?
John wrote this one while suffering through a bout of insomnia in India and missing Yoko. It’s a slow, heavy rocker released in 1968 on The White Album, and features some great singing from John. Not that he is by any means an underrated singer — I think it's safe to say that the world recognizes his talent by now — but I just feel like pointing out again what an incredible voice he had. Not many singers could sing a song in a tired voice and still have it rock so intensely.
It’s also worth pointing out, as I often do in a more general sort of way, just how much the Beatles changed in such a short amount of time. It’s easy to forget that while they may have recorded 10 albums (depending how you count them) from the release of their debut album, Please Please Me, to The White Album, it was all done over the span of a mere 5 years. (And it was only 4 years to Sgt. Pepper.) The idea of changing and growing that much over such a short period is inconceivable nowadays — for one thing, very few record companies would support anything like that number of albums in 5 years, as they’re too interested in milking each release for as long as possible. And for a second thing, well…it’s simply hard to imagine anyone being so wildly and successfully experimental and willing to change their sound so much in such a short time ever again. The Beatles had the talent to make it work, and the public was willing to listen.
Original post date: September 19, 2011