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Great Song, Hardly Any Chords

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Rock ‘n’ Roll was built around the three chord trick – I IV V. But, what about the songwriters who found inspiration from only two chords of less. ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ is an obvious choice to start us off –

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    • You could ask him, but all you would get is a 20 minute rambling anecdote involving a postman, a budgerigar and representatives of the West Hampshire Fire Brigade and at the end you’d be none the wiser.

  3. We’re getting into modal music here – no chord changes, just playing over specific scales. If there are chords at all its just modulating between two related ones, such as A minor and C major.

    See Indian music for example, or the whole genre of ‘modal jazz’ – most of Kind Of Blue, many of John Coltrane’s long wig-outs, the compositions of George Russell and so on.

    Indian instruments are often suited only for modal music. The tambura/tampura, as featured on Tomorrow Never Knows, typically only has four strings, all played open, and three are tuned to the same note, although one is an octave lower – e.g. in western tuning G-C’-C’-C. The player plays one string at a time in rotation, setting up a drone which resolves to a single major chord. You can here this in Tomorrow Never Knows.

  5. Roy Harper wrote a song called Frozen Moment on a single chord.
    It is unfortunately one of his worst songs, yet he played it at so many gigs. It seemed there was, he believed, something profound in the the way a single chord related to the song title.
    I’m sure you can find it somewhere should you be intrigued by my description.

  7. Wilson Picket’s Land of 1000 Dances is possibly the most frugal song in terms of both chords and lyrics. Apart from a few hammer-ons it’s one chord, and most of the words are ‘na’.

  9. Harry Nilsson’s Coconut is all one chord. It’s a weird song in general. The only variation is in his voice, really. The video is pretty, well, out there, too…

  10. As a songwriter/musician who LOVES chords and harmonies and stuff I always had difficulty with one chord songs eg the aforementioned Land Of 1000 Dances. I can appreciate that the groove/the feel/the pocket is essential but personally I love songwriters who can manipulate chords.

    The greatest of all I think was Ray Davies, but I could blather on endlessly about a whole lot of others.

    Here’s a couple –

    Neil Young is a master at putting interesting but common chords under a catchy melody that implies simpler chords. “After The Goldfish” for a start.

    John Lennon famously made up simple repetitive melodies but was another master at finding inventive chords. “I Am The Walrus”.

  11. In his oh-heck-the-world’s-gone-to-shit intro to Revolution in the Head, Ian McDonald complained about modern dance and hip hop records being in one key. It had never occurred to me that such records were in any kind of key, and that someone expecting key changes was rather missing the point of those records.

    The Chemical Brothers probably read that, because they took the bold step of having a brief key-change in Block Rockin’ Beats. It only just works.

  12. Placebo’s Pure Morning is one chord.
    Most Jesus and Mary Chain songs consist of 2. Not a criticism.
    U2’s When Love Comes to Town is nominally a blues but, rather than the standard E, A, B * progression, it only toggles between the the E and B. (Haters may form an orderly queue for that yawning open goal mouth!)
    The chords for AC/DC’s High Voltage* are ACDC.
    * May not be technically accurate, but accurate in spirit.

  16. Alex Turner made use of Dm and Em throughout 505. A song in which Miles Kane is able to guest on wherever they tour, much like Phil Daniels always used to when Blur performed Parklife on stage.

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