This includes some really neat examples of unorthodox chord changes in deceptively simple songs. But then the author goes off the deep end, alleging to have found overall patterns in these chords and coming out with a grand theory of how they relate to the songs' lyrics and emotions. This is typical of the poppycock that critics and academics invent. The piece is its own reductio ad absurdum.

Despite this, it contains interesting concrete observations, like that the Beatles blended their vocal harmonies with their more dissonant chords to make them sound right. That's pretty cool. But musicians do this by feel, and the way critics think doesn't (in my opinion) match the way art really works.

Anyway, thanks for one of the more unusual posts here in a long time. I'd never have run across it otherwise.

The author lost me around the time I noticed there was no reference to Dominic Pedler's work on the subject in the bibliography.

Certainly, hackers have nothing to do with music, and aren't much interested in anything outside their techie little sphere.

Edit: it hardly matters, but I didn't downmod you, I just disagree.