How a Variety of Musical Oddities Make The Beatles’ ‘I’m Looking Through You’ a Very Messy Song

In a rather forthright video essay, the host of You Can’t Unhear This addresses the mysterious goings on that make very messy work of The Beatles song, “I’m Looking Through You” from the 1965 album Rubber Soul. The narrator address mid-phrase edits, dropped beats and instruments, ghost vocals, stray guitar licks, confusing channel consistency and a general inattention to detail that was probably due to a very long, arduous and most likely, frustrating recording session.

According to studio logs, The Beatles spent almost 20 hours of studio time working on this song. More than they had spent any song up to that point in time. They recorded three very different versions over the course of three weeks and the one that was used was actually the last version recorded just days before the album was finally mixed. It almost seems like a demo of the song.