The correct year
In My Life belongs to 1965, not 1967. It appeared on Rubber Soul, which was released in Britain in early December 1965. It is included in a history of 1967 because the personal, reflective writing it represents is part of what led to the band’s more ambitious work of 1967, and because the song is so often placed among their best.
This article is about the lyric and the argument over who wrote the melody. The recording and its piano solo are dealt with separately on this site.
From a list of places to a song about memory
John Lennon later described the song as starting out as a kind of memoir. He said he began with a lyric about a bus journey through Liverpool, naming the places he passed along the way. In his telling, the first version was a long list of landmarks, and he found it dull and not very good as a song.
The final lyric dropped most of the specific places and turned the idea inward. It now speaks about places that have changed or gone, about friends and lovers, some living and some dead, and about the writer’s love for the people in his life. The effect is of an adult looking back, an unusual stance for a pop song written when Lennon was in his mid-twenties.
It is worth noting that the original list was Lennon’s own recollection, given years later. Details of exactly which places were named in it differ in different accounts, so the safest summary is that the song grew out of Liverpool memories and was refined into something more general.
Why it sounded new
Pop lyrics of the time were largely about courtship. In My Life is about time and the way affection survives change. The words are plain, and the first line gets to its subject without decoration.
Lennon was known to have been affected at this period by Bob Dylan’s songwriting, which showed that personal and reflective subjects were acceptable in pop. Rubber Soul as a whole is often described as the moment the group turned toward more mature writing, and In My Life is a clear example. The same impulse to write about childhood and memory returned later, when Lennon wrote Strawberry Fields Forever for the 1967 single.
The disputed melody
The authorship question is one of the best-known disagreements in the group’s history. All Beatles songs written in this period were credited to Lennon and McCartney, but the two men remembered the origin of the tune differently.
Lennon said that he wrote the song himself, lyrics and music, with minimal contribution from McCartney beyond small suggestions. McCartney said that Lennon brought in the lyrics and that he, McCartney, wrote the melody. Each man gave his version in interviews decades after the fact, and the accounts remain in conflict.
This is the standard problem with the Lennon McCartney songwriting credit. The shared credit was an agreement made early, and it does not tell us who wrote which part. For In My Life, the safest statement is that the lyrics are generally accepted as Lennon’s and that the melody is disputed.
Some later analysts have tried to settle the question by studying the music, but such studies depend on assumptions, and they have not ended the argument. It is reasonable to say that the song may well be the product of both men and that neither recollection can be proven.
Structure and mood
The song is in a major key with a gentle, steady tempo. The opening guitar figure played by George Harrison sets the tone, and the vocals are harmonised in the later sections. The arrangement is plain by later standards. There is no orchestra, only the group and a short instrumental break in the middle.
The sense of calm is part of what makes the lyric work. The singer is not distressed about the past, only aware of it. The last verse returns to the present, saying that nothing compares to the people in the singer’s life now, which gives the song a settled ending.
A song often remembered and misdated
In My Life is frequently ranked among the group’s finest songs and among the best of the century in various polls, though the rankings vary by list and are a matter of opinion. It is sometimes attached to 1967 in casual accounts because that year is so strongly connected to the Beatles in popular memory. The accurate dating is 1965, and the song belongs with the period that bridged the early pop hits and the studio experiments to come.
For readers following the chronology of the group, the sequence is straightforward. Rubber Soul came in late 1965, Revolver in August 1966, and the Sgt. Pepper album in 1967. In My Life stands near the start of that run as a sign of where the writing was heading.