Efficiency?
Nothing beats Dale Hawkins’ “Susie Q”.
On what basis? I play that song, complete with James Burton’s guitar lick - it grooves really well, but it isn’t easy to play (well, it isn’t easy to learn, but once you do there is a “riding a bike” aspect to it) - but I wouldn’t call it efficient.
The Police’s De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da. Choruses are fiddly, as is the middle eighth, but the majority of the song is six notes on the bass, and Andy Summers playing the same note on guitar.
VU’s There She Goes: I was dicking around on my six string one day, messing with bar chords, and realized I was playing the song. Stumbled on it completely by accident!
The most efficient song ever, although calling it a Pop song is probably a stretch, is John Cage’s 4’33". Personally, I liked the radio edit, 4’11", better.
Have you heard the dance remix?
“Need You Tonight” by INXS
Len’s Steal My Sunshine is pretty sparse, the one disco sample over and over throughout although there’s some instrumental overdubbing in the chorus.
I’m almost certain that “Papa” is in fact a one-chord song.
TNK has two chords: C, and Bb. I think.
I’ve always been partial to Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).
“This Song Is Just Six Words Long”
Also I believe Nilsson’s “Coconut” only has one chord throughout.
That’s a good one - it’s a bit like “Once in a Lifetime”, in the sense that the music is a simple loop that repeats throughout the song, with the variation coming from the vocals. I’m sure Talking Heads were thinking of world music when they did Remain in Light, presumably The Verve were thinking about drone-rock, and yet conceptually they’re very similar.
World music, there’s a thing. A lot of the stuff on Paul Simon’s Graceland has a similarly groove-orientated… I don’t like to say “groove-orientated”. It’s not right. Groovy is more correct but that word has been tainted by its association with chest hair and medallions. Curse you, chest hair and medallions.
Again, “Once in a Lifetime” is not as much of a simple loop as you are saying. The bass and drum parts and synth play the same parts for about 4 minutes or so, but the guitar part contains chord changes and there is a coda at the end.
It’s just a tinny cover of the original, with the same basic variation on a 12-bar blues chord progression (the chords more sparely represented, but still there), with the “Money” riff on top of the chorus. Just like the original (in its basic elements). If it’s efficient, so are about a million other 12-bar blues progression songs.
How about Helen Wheels, by McCartney & Wings? Other than the intro riff (repeated at the end of each chorus), it’s one chord.
Or “Run Through the Jungle” by CCR. One chord, I believe.
I think the poster was referring to the fact that it only cost a few bucks to record. That’s pretty efficient.
And while it follows the original song, the weird arrangement (iirc they used a piano with phone books or something on the strings) and the upper-class-white-girl louche vocals just sound great. Back in the day, it sounded fun.
John Peel, the legendary UK radio DJ, one explained why he loved The Undertones’ single Teenage Kicks so much. There was nothing you could add to it that would improve it, he said, and nothing you could take away that would improve it either.
That sounds like a pretty good definition of efficiency to me.
Oh, I like that version. It’s a fun arrangement. And I love the song in general. I have played it in bars about a thousand times. I was missing the “efficient 'cause you could record it in one take for $10” angle, I guess–I processed this thread in my head as “efficient compositions.”
Oingo Boingo (who grew increasingly efficient with their name) had moderately efficient songs, given the size of their band for some of them. They might not quite fit because there tend to be a number of embellishments. Although “Can’t See (Useless)” is just four repeated notes for most of the song. There are some other guitar parts (that also repeat themselves) and a bit more in the mix toward the end.
Of those that charted “Just Another Day” is way too complex by the OP’s standard, but I’d call it efficient in the sense of not using that much to achieve that complexity.
Danny Elfman’s more famous themes follow a similar pattern - The Simpsons is just a short theme with variations and some messing around in between repetitions. Batman is the same way.