"Time" concluded by saying that the multitude of "dissonances and eerie space-age sounds" on the track were partly the product of altered tape speed and direction, and commented: "This is nothing new to electronic composers, but employing such methods in a pop song is electrifying." In his review of "Sgt. Pepper" in June 1967, William Mann of "The Times" recognised the Beatles as the originators of the vogue for "electronically-manipulated clusters of sound", and he added: "In some records, it's just a generalised effect. But in 'Strawberry Fields', it was poetically and precisely applied." Ian MacDonald wrote in his book "Revolution in the Head" that it "shows expression of a high order … few if any composers are capable of displaying feeling and fantasy so direct, spontaneous, and original." According to music critic Tim Riley, the song "transformed Lennon's creative arc" by "expand the hallucinogenic drone of 'Rain' into layered colors that shifted when lit by his vocal inflections" and by inaugurating his use of free-form verse as a lyrical device. Riley adds that while it represented Lennon's "first glimpse of life" outside the Beatles, "part of the recording's ironic pull lies in how the Beatles drape a group sensibility around Lennon's abstract psyche, something only the most intimate of musical friends could do." In his commentary on the track in "The Beatles' Diary", Peter Doggett describes the song as "the greatest pop record ever made" and "a record that never dates, because it lives outside time". He rues the single's failure to top the now-official UK chart as "arguably the most disgraceful statistic in chart history".