It is one of the first Beatles songs to be entirely unrelated to romance or love, and marks a notable example of Lennon's philosophically oriented songwriting.

[6] The song appears in the film Yellow Submarine, where the Beatles sing it about the character Jeremy Hillary Boob after meeting him in the "nowhere land".

[3][10] Lennon reflected in a 1980 Playboy interview that: I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down.

"[13] The song as a whole is a 32-bar form, following the standard model of the Tin Pan Alley chorus, with a repeating 8-bar primary statement outlining the E-major chord, a third phrase (bars 17–24) forming a musical question (concluding on the dominant B), and a fourth phrase recapitulating the initial statement in E major.

[16] Beatles historian John Winn describes Tim's version as the "highlight of the disc" and a "timeless" interpretation.

He highlights a "down-home take" by Randy Travis for the 1995 Come Together Beatles tribute album for its "sweet cascading pedal steel riff".

The Paul Westerberg's acoustic rendering in the soundtrack 2001 film I Am Sam transforming the song into a "regretful lullaby".