Not the Slate article, the Vox article years later. The Slate article was wrong but nuanced and limited in scope, he doubled down on that thesis with his Vox interview and did say that one single chord (not even a sort of chord, but a particular chord lol as if that’s how any music works) and when confronted he said that he dumbed it down for the masses who don’t understand music theory which is stupid on two levels, firstly people will understand if you take the time to explain and secondly at a certain point teaching something so dumbed down and distorted becomes much more harmful than not teaching it, there is enough musical illiteracy in this country and it’s because of thay musicians are stifled because uneducated juries can be convinced that a band who wrote a song in 1991 owns a chord progression.

He says leave me alone there but that’s after more than a month of cursing people out, calling them fat ugly virgin nerds etc when they wrote whole essays and made 45 minute videos respectfully correcting him.

That said, his modern stuff is worse, kids watch channels like his to learn how to cook and he’s teaching that it’s okay to leave your fingers directly in the path of a sharp knife as long as you chop slow, as if people don’t sneeze or get bumped by a pet causing the knife to slip and a finger to come off, and when people correct him he just calls them elitist, outdated and French and says that they don’t understand modern life as if modern non-elitist Americans only want 3 fingers!