Time (Signature) after Time (Signature)

I was thinking about how many (or perhaps how few) popular songs there are that change time signatures in the middle. Just to be clear, I'm not talking about prog-rock and jazz, they do that all the time, almost as a point of pride;  Zappa almost never wrote anything in one time signature, Dave Brubeck made a career of exploring odd signatures, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a track by Yes, King Crimson or Genesis that kept to one sig all the way through. Led Zeppelin experimented with odd time-signatures, but I'm pretty sure all their biggest hits were in straight time. I'm talking about songs that were hits on the radio, songs about which no one particularly commented on the odd time-signature changes. (Genesis did, however, have a Top-40 hit with "Your Own Special Way" which switched signature and tempo from verse to chorus)

Anyway,  I thought of a few examples, and as preparation for writing a blog post about it, I decided to Google and see if other people had made lists of examples. It quickly became pretty clear that although there are occasional examples peppered around the charts over the years, this trick was used most extensively by The Beatles and basically as a one-off for anyone else. It made me wonder if I'd stumbled upon one of the secrets of their success, out there in plain sight with no one paying enough attention to pick up on it. Check the (incomplete, I know, but you have to start somewhere) list of changing time-signatures in popular music:

Dionne Warwick - I Say A Little Prayer
Mason Williams - Classical Gas
Lee Hazelwood & Nancy Sinatra - Some Velvet Morning
Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
Bee Gees - Jive Talkin'
Blondie - Heart Of Glass
Pink Floyd - Money
Peter Gabriel - Solsbury Hill
Kelly Clarkson - Low
The Beatles - We Can Work It Out
                    - She Said She Said
                    - Dr. Robert
                    - Good Day Sunshine
                    - Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
                    - Good Morning
                    - Strawberry Fields
                    - Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite
                    - Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey
                    - All You Need Is Love
                    - Yer Blues
                    - Happiness Is A Warm Gun
                    - Here Comes The Sun
                    - I Me Mine
                    - Two Of Us
                    - Revolution
                    - Across The Universe
                    - I Want You (She's So Heavy)
                    - Don't Let Me Down
                    - Across The Universe
                    - Mean Mr. Mustard
                    - Martha My Dear
                    - Blackbird
                    - You Never Give Me Your Money
                    - Magical Mystery Tour
                    - The End

I'm sure you can think of others, both Beatles songs and songs by other artists, but I think my point is made. Most of the Beatles songs on the list are Lennon songs - one gets the feeling that he just thought up words that expressed what he wanted to say and adjusted the time to accommodate them. Maybe that's the secret: instead of slavishly contorting the lyrics to fit a predetermined melody, we should loosen up and allow the words to dictate how the music goes.

I'll leave you with another McCartney song that fits the criterion: