I Want You (She's So Heavy)

"I Want You (She's So Heavy)" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by John Lennon (credited to Lennon–McCartney). The song closes side one on their 1969 album Abbey Road. The song is an unusual Beatles composition for a variety of reasons, namely its length (nearly eight minutes), minimal lyrics, a three-minute descent through repeated guitar chords over a rising background of synthesized white noise, and an abrupt ending. It was the first song recorded for the Abbey Road album but one of the last songs to be finished, on 20 August 1969, the last time all four Beatles were together in the studio.

The song is an unusual Beatles composition for a variety of reasons, namely its length (nearly eight minutes), its disproportionately small number of lyrics (only seventeen different words are sung), its three-minute descent through the same repeated guitar chords (a similar arpeggiated figure appears in other Lennon contributions to the album, "Because" as well as McCartney's "Oh! Darling"), its hard rock sound, and for its instantaneous and unanticipated end. It is also one of the last songs that the Beatles mixed as a group, on August 20, 1969.

David Gates writes of the song, "The hypnotically repeated guitar figure in 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)' is suddenly, arbitrarily cut off, jolting us into embarrassed awareness that we've let a mere recording carry us away." This is one of two songs on Abbey Road to feature Billy Preston playing organ, the other is Something.

Around the time of learning meditation in India, John always thought on what would make, and how to make the absolute perfect song of all time. With perfect harmonies, singing and instruments with only saying one word that would convey every possible meaning in the world (it's unknown what the word could've possibly been, but it's theorized that it could've been something like "peace," "yes" and "love.") While John never made that kind of song, he famously created I Want You (She's So Heavy), a almost eight minute long song (making the longest actual song made by the Beatles) with only fourteen different words including: "I," "Want," "You," "She's," "So," "Heavy," "Bad," "It's," "Driving," "Me," "Mad," "Yeah," "Babe," and "Know." Which, interestingly, means it has less lyrics than Her Majesty, a twenty-three second long song.

Lyrics
[Pre-Chorus]

I want you

I want you so bad

I want you

I want you so bad

It’s driving me mad

It’s driving me mad

I want you

I want you so bad, babe

I want you

I want you so bad

It’s driving me mad

It’s driving me mad

I want you

I want you so bad, babe

I want you

I want you so bad

It’s driving me mad

It’s driving me mad

I want you

I want you so bad

I want you

I want you so bad

It’s driving me mad

It’s driving me mad

[Chorus]

She’s so

Heavy

Heavy (heavy, heavy)

[Chorus]

She’s so

Heavy

She’s so heavy (heavy, heavy, heavy)

[Pre-Chorus]

I want you

I want you so bad

I want you

I want you so bad

It’s driving me mad

It’s driving me mad

I want you

You know I want you so bad, babe

I want you

You know I want you so bad

It’s driving me mad

It’s driving me mad

[Break]

YEAH!

[Chorus]

She so...

Credits

 * John Lennon - Lead and Harmony Vocals, Lead Guitar (1965 Epiphone 230TD Casino), Moog Synthesizer
 * Paul McCartney - Harmony Vocals and Bass Guitar (1963 Hofner 500/1)
 * George Harrison - Harmony Vocals and Lead Guitar (1957 Gibson Les Paul Standard)
 * Ringo Starr - Drums, Congas, Wind Machine
 * Billy Preston - Hammond Organ (1964 Hammond Organ)