Saturday, October 22, 2011

The most popular chord progression in pop music




I was already conscious of this.  You might want to not watch this video if you choose to remain a more passive music listener, because after this you'll probably at least smirk quietly in recognition any time you hear a song like this.

The chord progression in question is I-V-vi-IV, that is, Do-Mi-So to So-Ti-Re to La-Do-Mi to Fa-La-Do and back again.  The upper case Roman numerals indicate a major chord, the lower case a minor chord.

I've had a sort of sub-genre of songs like this in my head for a long time.  Yes, sometimes I'm listening to a song and I think, "Oh, this is one of those one-five-six-four songs."  Almost as popular is a very similar progression, I-vi-IV-V.

Anyway, this video is a great demonstration of what seems to be an extremely popular, if not the most popular chord progression in pop music.

2 comments:

  1. That's an awesome video.

    It reminds me of the time I explained the 12-bar blues progression to my wife. She'd never noticed it before, but once I showed her how it worked and played some examples for her, she realized she'd been hearing it all over the place.

    And she was right.

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  2. That's funny. I was explaining the blues structure to my young son the other day, and since then I've noticed it in a few songs that I had not noticed it in before.

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