Rick Beato makes a case that's been strangely absent from music discussion: the most sophisticated pop production of the 1970s wasn't about polish — it was about harmonic daring. His analysis of Genesis's "Entangled" reveals chord progressions so unusual that even modern AI cannot generate them.
The Genesis Album That Started It All
In 1976, a young Rick Beato sat in his brother Lou's bedroom, listening to records that would shape his musical taste for decades. Among them was Boston's debut album and A Trick of the Tail — the Genesis record that marked Phil Collins's first vocal contribution.
"This is the first record that Phil Collins sang on," Beato said during a recent studio session. "The guitar parts and the melodies are really interesting."
That album, recorded at Abbey Road with what Beato calls "the best microphones ever made" — Neumann U47s, U67s, and AKG D20s — represents a turning point in rock production.
Breaking Down Entangled
Beato walked through the song's opening, isolating guitar tracks to reveal three distinct layers: acoustic guitar, twelve-string electric, and regular electric guitar playing complementary parts. The chord voicings use open strings and unusual positions that create what Beato describes as "a beautiful B minor 9 voicing."
"There's a lot of really interesting things," he explained. "Phil Collins sings some flat intervals in the melody."
The most striking moment comes when Phil shifts to singing over a G chord, delivering what Beato calls a "beautiful harmony with F sharp and A — that's amazing." Then there's the transition from E major to a G sharp minor 9 chord.
"It's very, very strange," Beato noted. "Stay on the same root right there."
The song's echo parts are panned to the left speaker — creating spatial depth that Beato says is "perfect. No autotune needed." The vocal harmonies combine E minor to C to B major in progressions he describes as "really, really cool — like perfect harmonies."
Why AI Cannot Replicate These Sounds
Beato made a provocative observation during the analysis: no current AI program would ever produce these chord progressions.
"This is something that AI would never do," he said. "No AI tune is going to come up with that chord progression. It's so unusual because you can't feed in enough songs that do this — because this is like the only song that does this."
The reasoning: AI programs are trained on existing music, but Genesis's harmonic innovations don't exist in sufficient quantity within training datasets. The chord progressions on "Entangled" use triads and voicings that simply haven't entered the mainstream.
"AI will try, but they're not going to be able to," Beato continued. "They don't have enough training data. We need a new AI model that's only trained on Genesis."
This is significant because it suggests that certain musical innovations are irreplaceable — not by computational reproduction, but by human creativity at its most original.
The Recording Technology of the 70s
Beato connected the album's sonic quality to the gear used during production. "This was a time period when all the greatest recording equipment between the late 60s and the 70s was being made," he said.
"The best microphones ever made were being produced — Neumann U47s, U67s, AKG D20s, D12s for bass drum." He noted that Abbey Road used these microphones in the late 1960s, establishing a sonic standard that "has never been improved upon."
He praised the Neve consoles with their 1066 mic pres and 1073 preamps as "the sound of rock" — equipment that he says made music "sound better than it sounds today." The Helios console used for Led Zeppelin's fourth album represented what Beato calls "incredibly great music, really brilliant recordings, and gear."
No AI tune is going to come up with that chord progression. It's so unusual because you can't feed in enough songs that do this.
The era was also a period of experimentation — musicians were inventing new sounds, recording on tape, perfecting techniques like tape editing that defined rock production for decades.
Bottom Line
Beato's analysis reveals something important: the most sophisticated pop music wasn't produced by machines or AI — it came from human musicians pushing against harmonic conventions. His strongest argument is that these chord progressions are unique precisely because they're rare; AI cannot learn what doesn't exist in sufficient quantity within its training data. The vulnerability lies in his implicit assumption that Genesis's innovations were purely harmonic — when much of their power came from production and arrangement, areas where AI has made significant strides. Either way, "Entangled" remains proof that some musical breakthroughs can't be replicated by algorithm.