Main Writer: Lennon
Recorded: October 8, 1968
Released: November 25, 1968
Not released as a single

Lennon wrote "I'm So Tired" during the Beatles' stay with the Maharishi. With no booze, drugs or tobacco allowed at the ashram, Lennon was meditating all day and tormented by insomnia at night, obsessing over Yoko Ono, whom he had wanted to invite along despite the presence of his wife, Cynthia. One of dozens of songs the Beatles wrote in India, "I'm So Tired" detailed Lennon's fragile state of mind. It was also an open letter to Ono, whose postcards to Lennon in India were a lifeline. "I got so excited about her letters," he said. "I started thinking of her as a woman, and not just an intellectual woman."

Lennon called the White Album track one of his favorite Beatles recordings. McCartney liked it too — at one of the Let It Be sessions in 1969, the Beatles recorded an informal, jokey version with McCartney singing lead. "'So Tired' is very much John's comment to the world," McCartney later said. "'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."

Appears On: The Beatles

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