Trying now. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
> How much do you see a path from A(rticle) to S(ound in your ear).
100%.
I tried three more. Same result.
How much do you see?
That's certainly a revealing example. TTLS is entirely melody, and the article says basically nothing about melody. At a stretch you could say "the article talks about the major scale, TTLS uses notes from a major scale" and if your conclusion is "that's why I like it", then you should feel the same way about any permutation of the notes in TTLS, or indeed anything you get from hitting the white notes on a piano one at a time.
Its 13 mentions of melody sufficed for me.
> A key, its diatonic chords, a progression, those chords broken into an arpeggio one note at a time, and a melody that sticks to the scale
> Change the melody array to anything at all and it will still fit
The first part of TTLS (in C) is: C C G G A A G F F E E D D C. Let's follow the guidance of this last part and change the "melody array"; for neatness we can alphabetize it: A A C C C D D E E F F G G G. Now that you understand melody, please tell me why even though it "still fit"s it doesn't sound as nice.
What else do I see: congruence between melody and lyrics, harmonic depth, dominant half-cadence in the tonic arrival. Also the versions by Mozart add a lot and explain a lot of the endurance of the tune I guess. That has chromatic passing, secondary dominants, even a parallel minor (in the 8th variation)
If I may plug here the Berklee College online courses as a satisfied customer I can say if you are ready to put in the effort they are great.