Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me) - Composition and Lyrics

Composition and Lyrics

A full orchestral arrangement with strings and French horns adorning a bluesy rhythm track and guitar line provides the instrumentals. Music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine of allmusic interprets the song as describing the bittersweet story of a man who fantasizes about the woman he loves and imagines a relationship with her. The narrator is canny enough to realize that his daydreams are fiction and not fact, but nevertheless resigns himself to his fantasies. For Erlewine, "the Temptations' performance has a dream-like quality, quietly drifting through the singer's hopes and desires."

The song's first two verses establish the song's theme and explore the narrator's daydreams. In his mind, the narrator and his unrequited love are lovers, prepared to be married, "raise a family", and build "a cozy little home / out in the country / (with) the two children, maybe three". Then, in the bridge, the narrator prays to God that he will never lose the lady's love to another, or he will "surely die". The song's final line, however, reveals that he possesses her love only within the confines of his own imagination: "But in reality / she doesn't even know me."