grinding guitar is the honest sound of exhaustion and hard-won freedom." Dave Lewis of Classic Rock ranked "I Me Mine" at number 6 in his 2016 list of the ten songs that "highlight George Harrison's profound contribution to The Beatles". He said that it "hinted at the egos at play" that led to the break-up. According to Beatles biographer Ian MacDonald, "I Me Mine" "would have been a more truthful choice" for the B-side of the Beatles' final single, "The Long and Winding Road", rather than Harrison's "For You Blue", which was chosen instead. He says the song "juxtaposes a self-pitying Gallic waltz (complete with Piaf wobble) against a clamorous blues shuffle – suggesting that selfishness, personal or collective, subtle or crude, is always the same". Although he describes Harrison's lyric as "typically thoughtful", MacDonald finds that it "touches a nadir of worldly pessimism in the line 'Even those tears: I me mine'". In a 2003 review for Mojo, John Harris described Harrison's vocal as "frequently pitched just short of falsetto" and a "delight", and admired the string arrangement for "teas[ing] out the sense of camp" underlying the song." Author Mark Hertsgaard includes "I Me Mine" among the "honorable mentions" that counter Let It Bes reputation as a substandard final album by the band. He comments that Spector's orchestral overdubs were less intrusive than on "The Long and Winding Road" and "Across the Universe" because "the Beatles' playing was already so compelling", and he highlights Harrison's guitar playing and the changes in time signature as elements that lifted a potentially bleak theme and "gave the song real bite". Less impressed, Tim Riley rues that Spector's orchestration and choir fail to explore the ironies behind the joyful rock 'n' roll chorus "mocking the hubris of the verses", as his additions instead "virtually drown them". Riley concludes: "As unfettered rock 'n' roll with acoustic verses, Harrison's song answers greed with a crude groove; with Spector's ornaments, the track is a washout." Legacy Although a session on 20 August 1969, to oversee the creation of the master tape of their Abbey Road album, marked the last time that all four Beatles were present in the recording studio, "I Me Mine" was the last new song recorded by the Beatles. In his book Revolution in the Head, MacDonald writes that this was a "poetic stroke of fate", given the song's subject matter. Harrison titled