Taylor Swift's 5 favourite chord progressions

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Taylor Swift has an interesting habit of returning to the same old chord progressions time and time again. So I decided to go through her entire discography and work out which chord progressions she is using the most.

Here’s the full list of songs for each chord progression I talk about in this video:
I V vi IV
- Should've Said No
- Teardrops On My Guitar
- Bye bye baby
- Love story
- Champagne problems
- Mean
- Crazier
- Change
- All too well
- Eyes open
- I knew you were trouble
- Out of the woods
- Clean
- This love
- The archer
- Midnight Rain
- Cornelia street
- We were happy
- Cold as you
- Epiphany
- Christmas Must Be Something More

I V ii IV
- Wildest dreams
- I know places
- Beautiful eyes
- Only the young
- Crazier
- Invisible
- Fearless
- The outside
- Tied together with a smile
- You belong with me
- Superman
- The way I loved you
- Afterglow
- Sad beautiful tragic
- Speak now
- Daylight
- Getaway car
- King of my heart
- Bigger Than The Whole Sky
- Treacherous

I vi IV V
- Blank space
- I wish you would
- Teardrops on my guitar
- White horse
- Sweeter Than Fiction
- The best day
- Ronan
- It’s time to go
- London boy
- Illicit Affairs
- Tim McGraw
- Beautiful
- Me
- Last kiss
- This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
- Everything has changed
- New Year’s Day

vi IV I V
- Teardrops on my guitar
- You’re not sorry
- Sparks fly
- Christmas Must Be Something More
- Better than revenge
- Snow on the beach
- A Place in this World
- Haunted
- Marjorie

IV I V vi
- All you had to do is stay
- We are never ever getting back together
- Bad blood
- Wonderland
- Breath
- Tell me why
- I Don't Wanna Live Forever
- Anti hero
- Midnight rain

And, an extra special thanks goes to Douglas Lind, Vidad Flowers, Ivan Pang, Waylon Fairbanks, Jon Dye, Austin Russell, Christopher Ryan, Yu Kyung Chung, Toot & Paul Peijzel, the channel’s Patreon saints! 😇

0:00 Introduction
1:15 her 5th favourite progression
2:43 her 4th favourite progression
4:22 her 3rd favourite progression
8:22 her 2nd favourite progression
11:35 Taylor's favourite progression!
14:41 is this a problem?
16:49 Patreon
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the mashups are so beautiful!! Honestly this video was so well done and edited perfectly

thebeachisdark
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A lot of people mention Swift's lyrics, which are definitely very good most of the time, but I actually find her melodies her most enjoyable parts. The fact she can weave such diverse melodies and emotions over such generally simple chord structures is one of her strong suits. She also does have nice ways of mixing things up with the way she plays the chords (often incorporating some kind of drone note, or adding 9ths or sussing chords). Also, increasingly, and in part thanks to her collaboration with Jack Antonoff, her arrangements and harmonies are very interesting, and lend themselves very well to repeat listens.

Edit: For instance, All Too Well, Out of the Woods and Should've Said No are very different sounding songs with completely different energies, even though they use the same chord progression.

TheMOReviewers
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I think these chord progressions also elicit a pretty strong emotional reaction which is why they’re so effective

vvilliam
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I second the lyrics being the key selling point of her music. I think the variety of styles and layers of textures she and the musicians she works with are able to bring in with instrumentation also helps keep her music fresh. Also, great job on the mashups.

morganontheviolin
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This just gave me the sudden urge to learn every single Taylor Swift song on piano.

habsmcj
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I’m not even a big Swift fan but I love this, it shows how even if her genre has changed over the years she still writes similarly to her old country music

Aleximo
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The first time you played the 4 chords of her most used progression (I V vi IV), my mind automatically filled in "... speaking words of wisdom, let it be."

MikeShawaluk
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Thank you for the way this was presented. I feel like I’ve seen these types of videos before where the person calls this type of pattern “lazy and bad writing” because of the repeated chord progressions. But this was very educational and respectful of Taylor’s craft, which I appreciate so much.

kristinabeiermann
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The entire Red album was written the with C G Am F chords (not in that order, but only those chords were used). That album is completely versatile and is a great example how four chords can change so much

Edit: I meant 1-5-6-4 chords, not C G Am F

kxxn
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This actually turned out to be a demonstration of how much the melody makes the song.

mathmusicstructure
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I think the ability to create an interesting melody is one of her very strong points. It's so catchy, even with just using a common chord progression. Freaking 41 different sequences of melodies and lyrics written in just 2 chords progression and all of them sounds different but still nice and catchy. Not many artists can pull that stuff. Buying her album is not something I regret. It mostly contains 15++ songs (over 60 minutes) and all of them sound nice.

SheetFiber
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I appreciate the subtle effort to make these medley transition nicely between each other. That's how you know you care about the music, becuase you want it to ound nice even when you're making a point.

jaybonn
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A student of mine told me that she has a friend who only knows 4 chords and played the same 4 chords for an hour and figured out 20 Taylor songs.

Also, you should really do a video on Bob Dylan's chord progressions. A lot of people say that his lyrics are better than his music and while that is largely true, he's quite clever with his chord choices and very often they act as the song's main hook, more than the melody. You can recognize several Dylan songs just by the chords.

NeonRadarMusic
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As a huge fan of what some might consider weird music, here’s a takeaway I have: All of these chord progressions are strictly diatonic. There’s nothing weird about them. That makes them feel comfortable and familiar, and easy to listen to.
Contrast that with songs like Bliss by Muse, which is in C minor for the verses and switches to C major for the chorus, or The Cure’s song End which has a G minor, G major, F sus2 chord progression. Chromatic and adventurous chord progressions like that intentionally interrupt the flow, change the mood, and shake your foundation, and probably would not be appropriate for storyteller songwriting like Taylor uses, simply because it would be distracting.

zachary
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Interesting to note is that her 4th and 5th most common progressions (vi-IV-I-V and IV-I-V-vi) have the same chords in the same order, they just start the loop in a different place.

Razalhague
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It’s so weird when I heard the I V ii IV chord progression by itself, I instantly recognised it and it made me feel like home.

AP-dspj
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i think a very cool thing of hers is that she can hold on to a chord for a long time. many people go through the progression very quickly, but she usually holds each chord in the progression for a long time, making the melody kind of more satisfying. that's why she doesn't need that many weird or varied chords, because her melodies already do so much within each single chord

JRB
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your mashups here are really beautiful!
as a huge swiftie, I was amazed at how many times some of these have been used
great video!

dragonspider
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Hearing all her songs mixed together so beautifully made me so emotional 😭 You are absolutely right about these chord progressions being a familiar "bed" for her lyrics and stories to lay on. That is why so many like me always come back to her music. It's ever-changing but always feels like home 🥰

MJ-hehf
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I’ve been arranging covers of 13 songs from each of her albums (did 13 Days of Red last year for the re-recording release) so thanks for saving me a lot of time going forward 😂 Also the mashups are a great example of how she could go about performing more than 10% of her output for the Eras tour. 👏

rachelwyen