You might find this interesting. I agree with most of it. A long article goes on to explain what they're talking about.
“Every typical
Beatles' song has at least one rather unconventional chord progression. Often there are more and sometimes the chord sequences even come close to endangering the songs' musical comprehensibility. There is, however, some kind of harmonic structure beneath these remarkable chord progressions, preventing this to happen. In the Beatles' songs each of the basic chords can be replaced by several other types of chords. Separated by minor third intervals, the tones of these stand-in chords show a diagonal relationship. This principle of diagonal substitution helps the listeners to understand the songs musically. Closer study of the early Beatles' songs reveals yet another point of support. In each song there is a tight relation between the clusters of these stand-in chords and the semantics of the lyrics. As the meaning of the words in a song does shift along two dimensions, the chords will shift along the same lines. This correlation between words and chords offers a flexible way to shift emotional meanings in conversational contexts.”
I find this interesting.
I've always thought that between the two of them (Lennon & McCartney) (and later, Harrison) that they were brilliant and intuitive songwriters. They did this without any formal training in music theory.
And this only addresses "these remarkable chord progressions"; some of their songs are pure wackadoodle when it comes to
time signature changes. They would often shift time signatures effortlessly midstream, and sometimes it's so seamless that you don't even notice. They were kings of "messing with time signatures".
Happiness Is A Warm Gun is an obvious example, although it's basically a medley of four song fragments. It flows from “4/4” to “5/5” to “9/8” to “10/8,” to name a few.
There's
Across the Universe, where the time signature changes depending on what's needed to make the lyrics fit. Still, it flows quite naturally.
One of the quirkiest might be
Good Morning Good Morning, where the verses are apparently in an alternate universe:
3/4 | 5/4 | 2/4
3/4 | 5/4 | 4/4
3/4 | 4/4 | 2/4
3/4 | 3/4
One of the most famous is
All You Need Is Love. Again with the verses being somewhat off kilter, with the first two lines being either in 7/4 (or, perhaps, alternating 4/4 & 3/4 measures). This makes it the only song with a 7/4 meter to reach the
Top Ten (
Money, from
Pink Floyd, only got to # 13)
And the wickedest of them all, from George Harrison in 1969,
Here Comes the Sun, with the bridge being in several iterations of an 8/8 | 7/8 | 6/8 | 5/8 repeating pattern (or perhaps a 6/8 | 5/8 | 8/8 | 7/8, or maybe it's 6/8 | 5/8 | 4/4 | 7/8 . . . or perhaps you might be hearing it as a repeated pattern of 3/8 | 3/8 | 3/8 | 2/8 | 6/4 | 3/8).
Oddly enough, all but one of these examples are from John Lennon, although McCartney contributed his share of subtle oddball meter changes, like in
Martha My Dear, with an added half measure in the middle of the verses, or a single insert of a couple of 3/8 bars before the end of the 2nd chorus of
Back In the USSR. You might not even notice it in
Blackbird - the verses start with in 3/4, continue with a few bars in 4/4, a single bar of 2/4, then back to 4/4
Not sure anything more needs to be said.
