Structure
According to music critic Ian MacDonald, John Lennon created the song based on the chords of Del Shannon's "Runaway" which had been a UK hit in April 1961. Author Bill Harry wrote: "He just reworked the chords of the Shannon number and came up with a completely different song".
With its poignant lyric and flamenco style acoustic guitars, "I'll Be Back" possess a tragic air. Unusually for a pop song it oscillates between major and minor keys, appears to have two different bridges and completely lacks a chorus. The fade-out ending is unexpectedly sudden, seeming to arrive half a verse prematurely.
Producer George Martin preferred to open and close Beatles albums (and sides) using dominant material. He wrote: "Another principle of mine when assembling an album was always to go out on a side strongly, placing the weaker material towards the end but then going out with a bang". With this in mind, "I'll Be Back", with its subdued perspective, could be considered an unexpected choice as the album closer. Author Ian MacDonald pointed out: "Fading away in tonal ambiguity at the end of A Hard Day’s Night, it was a surprisingly downbeat farewell and a token of coming maturity". Music journalist Robert Sandall wrote in Mojo Magazine: "'I'll Be Back' was the early Beatles at their most prophetic. This grasp of how to colour arrangements in darker or more muted tones foreshadowed an inner journey they eventually undertook in three albums' time, on Rubber Soul".
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