which he said was timely, given that the Blue Meanies "have got a bigger stranglehold on the planet right now than they ever had back in 1967!" He added that "even the music industry has turned grey and is dominated by Blue Meanies." Retrospective assessment and legacy Writing for Billboard in 2001, Bill Holland grouped "Only a Northern Song" with the Byrds' "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" and early-1970s releases by the Kinks and Joni Mitchell, as songs that constitute the first wave of musical statements in which artists "accuse or indict their industry's business policies". Ian Inglis views "Only a Northern Song" as the Beatles' "first 'postmodern' song", due to the "deliberate ironic intent" evident in the subject matter and in the use of tape effects and scattered conversation. As with most of the Beatles' post-Sgt. Pepper 1967 recordings, their contributions to Yellow Submarine have traditionally been held in low regard by the band's biographers. Mark Lewisohn describes the group's 20 April overdubs on "Only a Northern Song" as "a curious session" and writes that their work over this period "display[s] a startling lack of cohesion and enthusiasm". Mark Hertsgaard considers that "Only a Northern Song" was "understandably … rejected as not good enough for Sgt. Pepper". Ian MacDonald views it as "dismal", a "self-indulgent dirge", and the Beatles' first "consciously slovenly" recording. In his book Psychedelia and Other Colours, Rob Chapman says that "Only a Northern Song" is one of the "most misunderstood and maligned" Beatles tracks, and that analyses such as MacDonald's miss "vital nuances", including a transcendent quality beyond Harrison's sarcasm over his publishing concerns, such that the lyrics reveal as much about the "illusory nature of existence" as Lennon's "Tomorrow Never Knows". Chapman says it would have been a welcome companion to "Within You Without You" on Sgt. Pepper and a counterbalance to the "forced jauntiness" elsewhere on that album. He also recognises the song as the only psychedelic track by the Beatles to fully address "the effect of listening to music on drugs". Among more recent reviews of Yellow Submarine, Peter Doggett, writing for Mojo, credits Harrison's two compositions with "[doing] much to rescue the album from oblivion", and he describes "Only a Northern Song" as "gloriously ironic". Alex Young of Consequence of Sound views it as "lyrically the quintessential track", since "it perfectly defines Yellow Submarine in two