Axis of Awesome - 4 Four Chord Song (with song titles)

When I was young and learning music theory in piano lessons, one day I realized that literally half the songs on the radio used the chord progression "I V vi IV". This was a huge revelation to me! To my dismay, I couldn't find any evidence on the internet that anyone else had noticed this, until very recently I saw the "Four Chord Song" by Axis of Awesome ( this video ). I was hoping to see some mention of that in this article, but was disappointed.

Interesting to see similarities in musical preferences & identifying common threads that lead to popularity. This video / song [1] was viral a few years ago because it demonstrated the similarities between major popular songs spanning multiple decades through the use of just four chords.. [1] this video

Pop has actually ossified over the last ten years or so. Dubstep is more than fifteen years old now, and the Paul Van Dyk album I've just listened to sounds a lot like the last Paul Van Dyk album a few years ago. Then you get this: link and this: link and the now famous this: this video and you start to wonder how much entropy there is to analyse. Modern classical has gone the way of modern art. It's now basically a marketing exercise. The musical experience is secondary. But then I expect creative AIs to be better at marketing too...

It is kind of absurd. Music is intrinsically about reuse, recycling, and reinvention [1]. Sampling is really just a continuation of that. [1] Axis of Awesome, The Four Chord Song, this video

> a lot of pop is made by knowingly and deliberately copying elements from various source songs One of the defining characteristics of "pop" music is the reuse of major structural elements like the primary harmonic progression (e.g. the infamous "4 chords"[1]). Listeners that do not have a lot of music theory knowledge and experience can still follow along with the "plot" of the song because it reuses simple structures they already know. Appreciation of more complex harmonic structure and other unique features requires a lot more experience with complex types of music theory. As with all art/writing, knowing your intended audience is important. If the audience includes people without music experience/training, limiting the "vocabulary" top what they know is absolutely necessary. For a very good explanation of this that includes examples, see this[2] video essay. [1] this video [2] link

I didn't learn music through Youtube. So unfortunately, I'm not familiar with any videos that I would consider comprehensive or canonical. At best, I can share videos that highlight a particular pattern, or share examples of popular songs that I recognize as having a commonality. Which might give you a better feel for what music theory is. Another thing to keep in mind is that musical patterns accrete into genres. And there's a wide variety of genres. So it's difficult for any single video to cover everything in detail. I think it's more common for videos to cover the patterns of a particular genre. E.g. if you're interested in Blues, consider searching for videos about Blues. ----- link I remember the above Vox video highlights a unique chord which sounds "melty" and is often used in holiday music. The chord is known as a "minor_7th, diminished_5th" aka "m7d5". this video This video is about the infamous "4-chord pop progression". It's ubiquitous on the radio. Elitists and connoisseurs tend to look down on it for appealing to casuals. The progression is "I V vi IV" (capital denotes major chords, lowercase denotes minor chords). link When I think of the "12-Bar Blues (Chord Progression)", I think of Stevie Ray Vaughn's "Pride and Joy". But there's tons of educational videos on this. It's very popular in not only Blues, but Rock & Roll. It's "I I I I; IV IV I I; V IV I I". But things get interesting here because musicians often substitue "jazzy" chords like Dominant_7th's (ak

Jazz guitarist here, and yes. One of the nice things about the instrument is that a relatively small number of forms for chords and scales are transposable up and down the fretboard, so once you burn the usual patterns into your head (iim7-V7-IM7, etc.) reading a new sheet usually doesn't take too much work. Most pop music is even simpler, as illustrated by Axis of Awesome. this video

When I think four chord song I think of Axis Of Awesome :) Medley of a bunch of pop songs on the premise they all use the same 4 chords. this video

The obligatory video is of course "Four Chords" by Axis of Awesome: this video Rick Beato has kind of the opposite video about "the most complex song ever": link The song in question is Never Gonna Let You Go by Sergio Mendes; plenty of videos exist of it; here's one live: link

The songs in the playlist are the first 4 chords of link essentially looped for 47 seconds. I V vi iii appears very frequently in pop music this video . If one were trying to exploit the algorithm...

Gift link: link My favorite part from it: > “We have spent the last eight years talking about two songs with dramatically different lyrics, melodies and four chords which are also different and used by songwriters every day, all over the world,” Mr. Sheeran continued. “These chords are common building blocks which were used to create music long before ‘Let’s Get It On’ was written and will be used to make music long after we are all gone.” From a different article about the trial: link > Before Sheeran’s Thursday testimony, his defense played a video of Australian comedy band Axis of Awesome performing a medley of dozens of songs with the same four chords. The video: this video

They have a similar (but not actually the same) chord progression. They're in a different key and the melody is different. If you could copyright similar chord progressions then that would be the end of new pop music. > similar enough that even Sheeran played them as a live medley That doesn't really mean much, any good sounding diatonic (chords all from the same key) song is going to share the progression with lots of other songs this video

I like the live version of that better[1], and while the Axis of Awesome wins in the shear number of songs, I like Rob P's presentation[2] of the same idea more. 1: this video 2: link

Novelty itself is easy, the hard part is the kind of novelty that is familiar enough to be engaging while also unusual enough to attract all the people bored by the mainstream. Worse, as people attempt to automate novelty, they will be (and have been) repeatedly thwarted by the fact that the implicit patterns of the automation system themselves become patterns to be learned and recognised… which is why all modern popular music sounds so similar that this video got made 14 years ago: this video (This is already a thing with GenAI images made by people who just prompt-and-go, though artists using it as a tool can easily do much better). But go too soon, be too novel, and you're in something like uncanny valley: When Saint-Saëns' Danse macabre was first performed, it was poorly received by violating then-current expectations, now it's considered a masterpiece.

There's a great video essay series known as "Everything is a Remix" by Kirby Ferguson [1] if you have an hour to spare. Ferguson uses the trends of music sampling as a base for how artists draw inspiration from others. The controversy of sampling has been used across genres, include around minute 9 Ferguson points out that Led Zepplin were considered ripoffs for their appropriation of Jake Holmes. Axis of Awesome also has a "chord progression song" [2] that makes fun of how similar many pop songs are. The video draws a nice parallel to how so much in our world serves as "inspiration" for our own works, but acknowledges the controversy around using a single source as "too much inspiration". Especially as we move into whatever copyright arguments are getting made toward AI right now, I think it serves as a nice outline on why this is such a complicated matter. [1] link [2] this video

There is a nice standup sketch from an Australian comedy group, the Axis of Evil, that most of the pop songs are using only four chords, this video