was then given a "satirical, drawing-room [musical] arrangement" on the official recording by the prominence of harpsichord and orchestral strings. The song's musical key is A. Its structure comprises two verses, a middle eight (or bridge) section, an instrumental passage (over the verse melody), followed by a final verse that leads into a coda (or outro) and a formal ending. In his commentary on "Piggies", musicologist Alan Pollack remarks on its abundance of classical music traits. These include the use of "arpeggio fragments" in Harrison's opening guitar motif and the repetition of this four-bar passage before each verse and the bridge – a device typical of Schubert's various lieder and the works of other nineteenth-century composers. During the song, the expected cycle of fifth notes in the major scale is interrupted through the inclusion of a III7 (C7) chord, which first appears at the end of the passage leading into the middle eight, before the melody drops down a tone to the minor ii (Bm) chord. The same section's first line ends with the surprise inclusion of a blues-based riff, soon after which the C7 chord is used again in the ascent to the IV (subdominant) chord, helping to accentuate the phrase "damn good whacking". As a further example of the melody's baroque characteristics, the bridge contains an implied but unfulfilled tonicisation of VI. In addition, over the coda, the recurring four-bar instrumental passage is partly shifted to a parallel minor, through the use of the more classically oriented Am chord, rather than its major equivalent as before. Following the instrumental coda, the song ends with the strings playing a tonically ambiguous cadence, which Everett describes as an unexpected "diminished fourth away from tonic". Lyrics Inglis writes that while the nursery rhyme form was Harrison's musical source for "Piggies", his lyrics adopt a political perspective, creating "a savage attack on the corporate greed of contemporary capitalism". In the first verse, Harrison sings of "the little piggies", for whom "life is getting worse". In verse two, "the bigger piggies" are described as "stirring up" the dirt that those smaller animals "crawl" in, while they themselves are dressed in "starched white shirts". According to music journalist Kit O'Toole, whereas the song's harpsichord-led introduction "suggests a salon featuring royalty in their finery", the lyrics immediately nullify this image in their depiction of pigs toiling in mud, thereby heightening the overall satirical effect. Everett