The song features a Hammond organ, which gives the track a drone-like quality typical of Indian music, electric guitar feedback, and an overdubbed brass section.

Peter Doggett considers it "one of the pinnacles of British acid-rock",[1] while Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone rates it among "the top five all-time psychedelic freakouts in rock history".

[12] By the time Harrison wrote "It's All Too Much", in 1967, the Indian sitar had temporarily replaced the guitar as his main musical instrument,[13][14] as he received tuition from Shankar[15] and one of the latter's protégés, Shambhu Das.

[24] AllMusic contributor Tom Maginnis writes that the lyrics "reflect the idealist optimism of the soon-to-be-labeled 'summer of love' and the kind of chemically enhanced mind-expanding euphoria that pervaded the new 'hippie' youth culture".

[37][nb 2] While noting the similar ideological theme behind the two compositions, Inglis writes of Harrison and Lennon "presenting alternative accounts of the same subject" in the manner of French Impressionists such as Monet, Renoir and Manet, each of whom painted their own interpretations of sites in Paris and Argenteuil.

[47] The group taped four takes of the basic track, the final version of which extended to over eight minutes,[42] with Harrison playing Hammond organ, Lennon on lead guitar, Paul McCartney on bass, and Ringo Starr on drums.

[49] On the Sunday following the sessions for "It's All Too Much", the four Beatles attended a party at their manager Brian Epstein's house in Sussex,[44][50] where Lennon and Harrison introduced music-industry publicist Derek Taylor to LSD.

[53] Maginnis describes the opening of the song as "a burst of howling guitar feedback and jubilant, church-like organ", adding: "The atmosphere hints at Harrison's fascination with Indian music and Hindu philosophy at the time, having a distinct, Eastern-flavored, droning undercurrent.

[4] Womack credits this guitar part to Harrison, who played his Epiphone Casino using "the instrument's Bigsby [tremolo] bar in searing, full vibrato force".

[71][72] Instead, they selected it later that year for the soundtrack to the Yellow Submarine animated film,[73] to meet their contractual obligations to supply United Artists with four new songs for the project.

[81] The edit was achieved by cutting a 35-second portion from around the three-minute mark, thereby removing the third chorus and the fourth verse (the last of which, beginning with the line "Time for me to look at you and you to look at me",[82] had appeared in the film),[83] and by fading out before the final minute of the coda.

[27][nb 8] Discussing the various underground influences in Yellow Submarine, author Stephen Glynn identifies the segment featuring "It's All Too Much" as being among the film's "most daring sequences".

[86] Led by art director Heinz Edelmann,[87] the animation for the song reflects the influence of psychedelic artists such as Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, who in turn were inspired by the work of the nineteenth-century illustrator Aubrey Beardsley.

[86] Referring to London's UFO Club,[88] for which the Hapshash team designed promotional posters, Glynn considers the scene to be a cinematic version of Unlimited Freak Out – "a 'happening' that sought to create a totalising mind-expanding environment involving music, light and people".

[90] In Womack's description, in the sequence for the song, the Beatles "vanquish the evil Blue Meanies and celebrate as the colorful beauty of friendship and music have been restored to Pepperland".

[100][101] Viewed as a secondary release beside the band's recently issued double LP, The Beatles,[102][103] the Yellow Submarine album appeared in January 1969,[104] six months after the film's London premiere.

[108][nb 10] Recalling the release of Yellow Submarine in his 1977 book The Beatles Forever, Nicholas Schaffner described "It's All Too Much" as the only one of the new songs that appeared "to have taken more than a few hours to write".

He comments that the recording was "positively anarchic" in mid-1967 but, by 1969, when it received widespread release, the song was "slightly less groundbreaking and a little more reactionary to the psychedelic movement that the band itself had helped popularize".

In Revolution in the Head, Ian MacDonald claims that their appetite for illicit substances had started to "loosen their judgement" ... And yet their new-found looseness made for some tremendous music, notably the frazzled fantasia of Harrison's "It's All Too Much".

[36][nb 11] Discussing the lyrics, particularly the line "Show me that I'm everywhere, and get me home for tea", MacDonald considers the song to be "the locus classicus of English psychedelia" and he comments that in Britain, unlike in America, "tradition, nature, and the child's-eye-view were the things which sprang most readily to the LSD-heightened Anglo-Saxon mind.

Pepper ..."[120][nb 12] Richie Unterberger of AllMusic similarly considers Yellow Submarine to be "inessential" and describes the track as "the jewel of the new songs ... resplendent in swirling [organ], larger-than-life percussion, and tidal waves of feedback guitar" and "a virtuoso excursion into otherwise hazy psychedelia".

"[123] In his book Psychedelia and Other Colours, Rob Chapman writes that further to the devotional and exotic "Within You Without You", "It's All Too Much" blends "physical love, ego loss and spiritual oneness as well as any song the Beatles recorded during their psychedelic phase".

[124][nb 13] The song featured in Mojo's 1997 list "Psychedelia: The 100 Greatest Classics", where Jon Savage described it as an "aural pleasure" that included "mad brass and handclaps so luscious that they sound like the chewing of a thousand cows".

[127] The editors credited "It's All Too Much" with inspiring the Krautrock genre, while Primal Scream singer Bobby Gillespie described it as "a great piece of music" that, in departing from the Beatles' more regimented approach, evokes "the same feeling you get in 'Be-Bop-A-Lula' or a Muddy Waters or John Lee Hooker tune".

[132] In October 1976, Phil Sutcliffe of Sounds magazine described Hillage's adoption of both "It's All Too Much" and Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" as the "policy statements" for his solo career.

[133] Speaking to Trouser Press that same month, Hillage said he was drawn to the Beatles song because of its positive message, but especially its success in conveying joy without resorting to escapism.

[138] Reviewing BBC Radio 1 Live for AllMusic, Chris Nickson writes that Hillage's reading "not only heightens the Eastern-flavored psychedelia, but lets [the guitarist] unleash some of his most scorching axe work yet, tearing into the song like a starving man given a five-course meal".

9: A Tribute to The Beatles in Aid of Cambodia, a multi-artist compilation supplied with Revolver magazine;[143] the album was reissued in the United States in 1997, following the popularity there of Britpop bands such as Oasis.