Ed Sheeran has posted a short video where he says he can play any song using 4 chords. The same 4 chords. Sure, you can get by with a LOT with the I, IV, V, and vi, but what I’m wondering would playing a V7 be considered adding a 5th chord or just a minor variation of one of the 4 chords?
Since it’s just adding one note, and not changing the essential feel of the chord, I’d say it’s still a V.
In the key of C, you’d be playing that G chord that wants to resolve to the tonic (C-E-G). Adding an F# to your G-B-D chord would just intensify that “Get me back home!” feeling.
Try this at home, kids!
I would consider it the V for that progression’s purposes. Something like Am7, Dm7, G7, Cmaj7 would still be a iv ii V I progression, just that pop doesn’t always go past the basic triads (though a lot does).
But, Ed, it’s not just your “amazing” ability. Anyone can do the same thing: Play most POP songs with four chords.
Now, any song with more complexity would require more chords (and more complex chords, and key changes). Just try some Joni Mitchell or Elliott Smith or Steely Dan (Deacon Blue has dozens of chords) or Jacob Collier… or the Beatles! Hey, even simple fare like Let It Be has 6 to 9 chords depending how you count 'em.
Um, I add an F to a G chord for a G7 aka G minor 7th. An F# would make it a G Maj 7. The G7 resolves to C much nicer than a G Maj 7.
Speaking of the four chords, just in case you’ve never heard of the Axis of Awesome…
As does everyone that didn’t make my mistake…
If he’s talking about guitar, I would consider V7 a different chord. But it wouldn’t be a problem because you can always* play V instead of V7 and it will sound fine. I did that for years when I was playing by ear.
The main issue I’d see is that there would be no modulation, unless he means 4 finger shaped, and uses barre chords. Though, even then, that’s just for major key songs, and you can’t mind that it will lose a lot of character.
*For functional harmony, at least. But if it’s not functional, then it’s not technically a V(7) chord.
You don’t even need four chords to rock out:
Or Wichita Lineman, or After the Love is Gone.
Don’t call G-B-D-F a “G minor 7th” as every musician will think you’re talking about G-B flat-D-F. I would just say “G7” or “G dominant 7” if there were some reason I needed to be extra clarifying, but in the contexts I’ve played in G7 only means G-B-D-F. I suppose you can also say “G triad with a minor seventh” or “G major, minor seventh” but that’s needlessly wordy. Regardless, it’s not a G minor 7th.
I’m a guitarist in a classic rock cover band. I routinely turn a major chord into a 7th (or even a 9th) at certain points of a song, just to add some emphasis, variety, or spice. I definitely don’t consider it as adding another chord to the composition.
Using the four chords kinda breaks down at some point if the song modulates away from the home key.
For example, the V of V (in C that would be D) you can probably get away with an A minor chord, but the IV of IV (Bb), I don’t know what you could substitute.
I mean, he’s obviously exaggerating. But you can play a slew of pop songs with just the four chords. I can probably name hundreds or maybe thousands of songs if you give me some time that won’t fit, even with substitutions. Most songs won’t fit just those four chords. It’s also a bit of a statement at just how formulaic pop music is.
Also, Jack Black did this four chords of awesome bit like a decade and a half ago.
Sheeran started composing music in 2004. It was already, for the most part, already hopelessly dumbed down for the masses. I don’t think he is exaggerating. I think he only knows the world in which he has lived. Has anything been written pop-wise in this century using more than four chords? Nothing comes to mind, unless it was from an older composer like Sting, or perhaps someone like Dave Matthews.
Edited to add: Sheeran says he grew up listening to Elton John and Joni Mitchell. I’d love to hear him play Rocket Man, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, or Help Me using only four chords.
I’m 99.9% certain he wasn’t being literal. He couldn’t even play all his songs using only four chords (though he does rely a lot on I-IV-V-iv in whatever order.) Of course he’s exaggerating!
It’s just a riff on this:
Four-chord or even shorter loops are everywhere in the history of pop music. In the 50s/60, you could have done a nice mashup of iv-ii-V-I songs (or iv-IV-V-I). Then there’s all of blues and much rock where all you need is I-IV-V. And jazz is just ii-V-Is all over the place (I’m not being literal there, but it’s not too far from the truth, as that is the backbone of much jazz or a certain era.) Note also that in the above video, songs are mashed up from the 70s to the 00s, so it’s not just new songs.
I just read that Ed Sheeran is even aware of this video, having used it in a copyright defense recently.
If nothing comes to mind, it’s because you’re not listening to pop music. I dunno, let’s take Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire” which is all over the place still: That’s predominantly a I-III-IV-iv progression (still four chords, but not the usual four chords–you will find this progression elsewhere, like in Radiohead and the Hollies). In the chorus you get an additional ii and a V, so we’re up to six chords.
OK, on the radio is Lizzo’s “About Damned Time.” That song is vampish, but all over the place. The verse is mainly Bbm to Ab (as slash chords, so Bbm/Eb and Ab/Bb), but then you get a Cb in there, some Abm, Gbmaj7, and sometimes the slash chords are played over the root, so depending on whether you think of an Ab/Bb as a type of Bb11 you can have even more chords there.
Brittney Spears was this century. “Toxic” goes all over the place; the chorus itself is like six chords, and doing fun stuff! Like it goes Cm-Eb7-D7-Db7 for a cool chromatic run and then Cm-Eb7-Ab-G7-Db7 the second time around. Yeah, none of that could be played with the four Ed Sheeran chords without cheating it.
So there’s a few bookending this century. I can literally go on for weeks breaking down Top 40 songs that don’t fit the I-IV-V-vi (in whatever order) mold, or just any four-chord mold. Yes, there’s a lot of songs that do fit that (I would say about half of, say, Taylor’s catalog seems to work with knowledge of only those four chords. But it also doesn’t matter. Blues as a genre survives, despite most songs sticking rigidly to 3 chords. Greater harmonic content != better music necessarily.)
Yeah, there’s an immense array of very nice songs that use only 4 or 3 chords total.
That’s a very different claim that “can play ANY song with just four chords”.
Hmm, trying to think of a song in my songlist that uses fewer than three chords…
Yeah, and once again, there’s no reason to take Ed literally in the clip. He was just doing a party trick on a talk show. His own oeuvre can’t all be played with just four chords, and I’m pretty sure he knows this.
For two chord songs? “Whole Wide World” by Wreckless Eric or Cage the Elephant? Don’t know your music tastes but that’s one popular one. If you listen to Stereolab, you’ll find some. Neu! has some one-chord compositions, but not technically “songs” as there is no singing.
Have you mixed up iv and vi in some of these?