[7] Dylan has long been fascinated by the concept of the multiplicity of the self, evident in everything from his fondness for Arthur Rimbaud's phrase "Je est un autre" ("I is another"), which he said caused bells to go off when he first read it in the 1960s,[8] to the lyrics of his Rastafari-influenced 1983 song "I and I".

[11] Dylan's chameleon-like nature had caused critics to use Walt Whitman's line "I contain multitudes" in relation to him long before he ever wrote a song by that title.

[13] When asked about writing the song by historian Douglas Brinkley for an interview in The New York Times to promote the release of Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan noted that he "didn't really have to grapple much.

[20] When Dylan played Lotte Lenya's version of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's "Alabama Song" on the "Whiskey" episode of Theme Time Radio Hour, first broadcast in September 2020, he characterized her vocal technique as "sprechstimme", meaning half-spoken/half-sung, before humorously adding, "I use that sometimes myself".

[25] While reviewing Rough and Rowdy Ways in his "Consumer Guide" column, Robert Christgau said the track "provides exactly the right thematic sendoff" within the context of the album's "elegiac retrospective".

[26] Mark Beaumont of NME called it a "sanguine personal exposé" and "a kind of literary folk 'My Way', a porch chair portrait of a life fully lived", in which Dylan "peels away the details of his journey with the grace and conciliation of a master making his peace".

[27] Several critics have commented on Dylan's surprising use of humor in the song, including NPR's Lauren Onkey who noted that the lyrics contain "a list of sometimes funny (we often forget that Dylan is funny) and preposterous brags of the singer's power and prowess that evoke the blues",[28] and USA Today's Patrick Ryan who, in an article about the "Best Songs of 2020", referred to it as both "cheeky" and "quietly heartbreaking".

[30] The Sydney Morning Herald named "I Contain Multitudes" one of the "Top five Bob Dylan songs" in a 2021 article, calling it a "paean to unassailable self-knowledge [that] is sung like a man at peace with every detail".

[32] The Pretenders' lead singer Chrissie Hynde told Rolling Stone that she found the song "fucking devastating" and that its release, along with the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, inspired her to finally realize her ambition of recording a Dylan covers album.

[39] The line "I live on a boulevard of crime" is a reference to the setting of Marcel Carne's 1945 film Children of Paradise, one of Dylan's all-time favorite movies.

[40] Children of Paradise was an influence on Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour in 1975 and his 1978 film Renaldo and Clara, and he previously quoted a line from it ("Love is so simple") in the Blood on the Tracks song "You're a Big Girl Now".

[41] The line "I carry four pistols and two large knives" is a reference to Ward Will Lamon, an overarmed bodyguard who accompanied Abraham Lincoln to his inauguration, as described in Shelby Foote's The Civil War: A Narrative.

"I Contain Multitudes" received its live debut at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on November 2, 2021, the first concert of Dylan's Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour.