Unfortunately, characters like Neely exist because of a general lack of knowledge and interest on the part of the public that also props him up. He’s like any of these other TED Talk infotainment guys, circulating shallow, inaccurate, harmful ideas with absolutely no accountability.

Occasionally he’s on the money. There’s a video about tritones that I really don’t object to. From a musicology/history of theory perspective, there’s nothing controversial about it and I appreciate that he’s pushing back on a common myth.

Other times, he says some really dubious stuff. There’s that video about some modulation in a Celine Dion song that pieces together its argument from another feel-good edutainment music theory work that nobody examines critically, Harmonic Experience by W.A. Mathieu, and some idealistic embodiment stuff (vulgar though; he doesn’t cite Arnie Cox or anyone like that, not that I think that would make it any better). The experienced analyst really has to suspend their disbelief. The harmonic dualism he draws from Mathieu was called out as nonsense back in the 19th century, for fuck’s sake.

Then, there’s another video on that Recorder Team lady’s channel where we learn that Neely has never before heard of red notation or the rhythmic craziness of Ars Subtilior/Trecento music. Do they not teach music history at Berklee?

When I watch his videos, I get the pervasive sense that he only first encounters the concept at hand a few weeks before, and his familiarity with said topic is limited to what he researched for that specific video. He basically makes undergraduate research essays with a budget. And people pay him for it and take it for gospel.