I'm the Greatest

In his contemporaneous review for Rolling Stone, Ben Gerson praised it as a song on which "a stunning alchemy occurs";[1] author Peter Doggett likens the track to a "lost gem" from the Beatles' 1969 album Abbey Road.

[3][4] In the eyes of the media and the public, the band members were divided into two factions: John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, all of whom had opted to engage the services of Allen Klein to manage the group's Apple organisation in 1969; and Paul McCartney, whose isolationist stance had been interpreted as the reason for the break-up.

[11] Lennon took the song's title from a catchphrase adopted by boxer Muhammad Ali,[12] whom the Beatles had met in February 1964,[13] shortly before filming A Hard Day's Night.

[15] Working at his home studio at Tittenhurst Park,[16] Lennon taped demos of the new composition and also of "Make Love Not War", a song he recorded formally as "Mind Games" in 1973.

[12] As part of what authors Ben Urish and Kenneth Bielen describe as the song's "sardonic take on the Beatles' experience", Lennon compares the international success of the band to "the greatest show on Earth" yet qualifies the claim with "For what it was worth".

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band[2][36] – specifically, the character named at the end of the album's title song and under which Starr sings the ensuing track, "With a Little Help from My Friends".

[34][44] This was partly due to Starr, Lennon and Harrison's decision to sever their business ties with Allen Klein, whose control of Apple had been the cause of bitter division between them and McCartney.

[20][45] Klaus Voormann, a friend of the Beatles since their early years in Hamburg,[46] also cites a willingness on the part of all the album's contributors to help Starr fully establish himself as a solo artist.

[48][49] Lennon played on the session, as did Harrison, who was in Los Angeles for meetings relating to two upcoming Beatles compilations, 1962–1966 and 1967–1970,[48] and to produce a new album by Ravi Shankar.

[57] While identifying this period as an artistic "malaise" for Lennon, following the failure of his and Ono's 1972 album Some Time in New York City, Urish and Bielen comment on the confidence he exhibits when directing the rehearsals.

[72] In October, by which point he had separated from Ono,[73] Lennon told Chris Charlesworth of Melody Maker that the four ex-Beatles were "closer now than we have been for a long time" and there was "always a chance" of a temporary reunion.

[82] Combined with the closing song, "You and Me (Babe)", written by Harrison and Mal Evans,[83] "I'm the Greatest" provided the album with a loose concept in the form of a stage show.

[83] Among his lithographs appearing in the LP booklet, Voormann represented "I'm the Greatest" with an image of Starr as a statue, with his fist raised, towering high above an open space filled with minuscule figures.

[86][87] Recalling the release in 1981, Woffinden said the lithograph reflected the album's "quintessentially Ringo" quality, whereby Starr's gifts were revealed in his ability to unite his supposedly more talented colleagues.

[88][nb 8] Helped by the speculation surrounding Starr's collaborations with his former bandmates,[91][92] and by the interest generated by the two Beatles compilations,[36] Ringo was a commercial success,[93][94] overshadowing Lennon's concurrently released Mind Games.

"[103] In his review for the NME, Charles Shaar Murray found that Lennon's composition "verges uncomfortably on self parody" with Starr left as "the butt of the joke, as he's the poor sod who's actually singing it".

Amid his criticism of the lyrics, Shaar Murray said that the return of Billy Shears "complete with canned applause" suggested an attempt to "plug the musical holes in the album with large handfuls of charm and nostalgia".

[28] Until Harrison's tribute to Lennon after the latter's murder in December 1980, "All Those Years Ago", and the surviving Beatles' reunion for their 1995 Anthology project, it was also the only song to feature more than two former members of the band after the group's break-up in 1970.

With regard to "I'm the Greatest", they added: "Not surprisingly, it is the most Beatlesque cut on the album, with economical bass figures, jangling guitar arpeggios (and a wicked little flashback to 'Sgt Pepper' therein).

"[105] Peter Doggett writes that whereas Lennon's 1970 version had reflected his emotional pain and bitterness, once given to Starr the song became "a sardonic tribute to the Beatles" that "sounded like a lost gem from the Abbey Road sessions".

[108] Writing in MusicHound Rock, Gary Pig Gold identifies it as Starr's "theme song" as a solo artist, typifying both his propensity for nostalgia and the all-star collaborations suggested by his "with a little help from his friends" approach.

[113][114] It was the opening song throughout their 1992 North American and European tours,[115] the last of which included a return to Liverpool for Starr's first concert in the city of his birth since the Beatles had played there in December 1965.