Music theorist Daniel Harrison describes the progression as "highly chromatic" and writes, "in the absence of a strong E tonic, A major seems to fill the vacuum at the tonal center, since it is the chord that begins the refrain, and since it receives a strong tonic charge upon the resolution of the chord preceding the refrain. In addition, the opening chords of the verse, while nondiatonic to the nominative E major tonic, "are" diatonic to A." Lambert writes that the end of the refrain "recall the chord progression of the introduction but ... with an even slighter sense of tonal security." In a 2011 interview, Wilson commented that the melody of "I may not always love you" resembled the "I hear the sound of music" line from "The Sound of Music".