"I Am... I Said", which took Diamond four months to compose, is one of his most intensely personal efforts, making reference to both Los Angeles and New York City. Diamond told Mojo magazine in July 2008 that the song came from a time he spent in therapy in Los Angeles. He said:
"It was consciously an attempt on my part to express what my dreams were about, what my aspirations were about and what I was about. And without any question, it came from my sessions with the analyst."

In the same month, he told Q that the song was written "to find [him]self" and added, "It's a tough thing for me to gather myself after singing that song."

But Diamond has also given another inspiration for this song: an unsuccessful tryout for a movie about the life and death of the comedian Lenny Bruce. Author David Wild interviewed Diamond for a 2008 book and he discussed how his efforts to channel Lenny Bruce evoked such intense emotions that it led him to spend some time in therapy.

Neil Diamond goes through a full-on existential crisis in this song as he screams out, knowing no one will hear him. David Wild, author of He Is...I Say: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Neil Diamond, told Songfacts: "Neil began the song after doing a screen test to play rebel comedian Lenny Bruce in a film. Feeling that he had failed, Neil was thrown into something of an existential funk and started the song. It would take months for him to finish the song, but in the end it would become a classic. One postscript: around 2000, Neil allowed me to see the 'failed' screen test that set him off, and I was surprised to see that after all that he was really wonderful in the part. Still, things worked out pretty well for Neil."