Well, I certainly didn't intend to take an almost month-long break after my first substantive post. I'll see if I can make contributions with a little more regularity, even if that requires them to be a bit more compact.
Thank you for the comments on the last post, everyone. Chen pointed out a great example of a song that totally embodies the sort of cloud-bursting, huge, minor-verse to major-chorus transition, "Happy Together" by the Turtles, and inadvertently brought "Days" by Television to my attention at the same time, which has little inverted major-verse to minor-chorus action as well.
Koko pointed out a composition of his own that fits in the conventional minor-chorus, major-verse scheme too.
Laurel nobly came to the defense of the slandered "The Fool on the Hill", advocating lyrical primacy as well as the active-listening pleasure of surprising effects in music. While I don't agree with her, I can't say that she's alone.
For one, she's got Alan W. Pollack, musicologist on her side. Here's what he had to say about "Fool":
"This song surely belongs in McCartney's top drawer. On one level, it is one of his most explicit efforts in the evocative direction of the Early Romantic (19th century) 'art song'. Yet, on another level, it can also be described as an intriguing fusion of the sort that is arguably one of Paul's specialties of the house."
I guess I can see where Laurel and her scholarly comrade stand, and I'm trying to really see why I personally don't think it's one of his better compositions.
I think a lot of it has to do with the awkward juxtaposition of that dopey-sounding, oompah rhythm and syrupy-sweet instrumentation with the elongated diction Paul uses to sing the lyrics. It comes off to me like this weird blend of naivety and condescension; when the song goes into its minor key chorus, it's like this concerted effort to "get deep". The moment Paul sings "he knows that they're the fools", is kind of the kicker, the clinching moment of the faux-fool's spiritual snobbery. [Wow, this little digression turned out way more bitter-sounding than I intended... ^_^]
That quote, by the way, was taken from Pollock's analysis of "Fool on the Hill", which is itself part of a huge compendium he composed, a complete music theory analysis of the entire Beatles catalog. (!!!) Entitled the "Notes on..." Series, it consists of Pollock's exploration of the melodic and harmonic structure, lyrical usage, compositional structure, just about every aspect you can think of, for every Beatles song.
You can find it here arranged in alphabetical order (the numbers on the far right signify each song's place in chronological order), here arranged in the order Pollock wrote them, and here in the form of a 751-pg.(!) pdf file (Don't worry, it's all kosher, authorized by Pollock himself).