When did this chord progression become so popular?

the 1564 core progression is one of if not the most common core progression in Western pop music it's such a common core progression that it's sometimes referred to as the axis core progression named after a comedy Troop that made a skit about how common this core progression is what you're trying to say is you can you can take those four chords repeat them and pump out every Pop Song Ever is is that what you're saying yeah but this core progression hasn't always been this popular and I wanted to find out at what point did this core progression go from just being another nice core progression that occasionally gets used to the most overused and predictable core progression out there so what I did is collected together a list of 446 songs that use this core progression and plotted the year of their release onto this graph let's start by looking at the earliest use of this core progression that I could find which was the 1958 song to know him is to love him written by Phil [Music] Spectre now quick side note here some people list the traditional tune Old Land zign as the oldest example of the 1564 core progression but in fact the original and traditional version of oldland Z doesn't use the 1564 core progression it it's only some Modern reharmonization that fit the melody to that core progression but anyway returning to the graph it's not until 5 years later that I could find the second earliest example of the 1564 core progression at work in Bob Dylan's 1963 song Don't Think Twice It's all right this instance of the chord progression is very fleeting and actually also includes a passing note between the sixth and fourth chord you just kind of wasted my precious time don't think another song released in 1963 that almost uses the 1564 cord progression is One Fine Day written by Carol King and Jerry goffen this song does use the chord progression 1564 but the four chord is actually a minor chord rather than the typical major chord so it's not exactly the same chord [Music] progression and you will know how I was meant to be through the rest of the 60s we get a handful of other examples but as I was saying before at this point in history this core progression that's now considered absurdly cliche was just another core progression that people occasionally used in the 1970s we can see the core progression popularity start to grow I personally found 23 examples of songs from the 1970s that use the 1564 core progression here's a short sample of them take me home to to the [Music] place I was born in the north ofing I was raised in a working [Music] town I can't face your threats and stand up straight and tall and Shout about it [Music] in the 1980s the popularity continues to grow I found 30 songs from the 1980s that used this C progression and something that becomes more and more common from this point onwards is songs being based entirely on a loop of this cord progression rather than splicing this cord progression in with other cords So Lonely by the police from 1978 is an early example of this as is you's with or without you with without you [Applause] [Music] with all wi I [Music] can now it's the 1990s where this cor progression use starts to become something of a cliche particularly in the style of pop punk a lot of pop punk songs use this cor progression to the point that some people actually call it the pop punk core progressione play this song on the [Music] radio I heard you crying [Music] [Applause] loud pop Punk's use of the 1564 core progression might have been started by some of these early punk bands including the Clash the only ones and then later the punk band Misfits [Music] and as we enter the 2000s as we enter the 21st century we can see the true boom of this core progression at some point in the early 2000s it's like this cor progression just became the goto core progression to write a song with just like how in the 1950s the fashion was to write songs using the 12 Bar Blues core progression in the first decade of the 21st century the fashion was to write songs with this core progression 1564 it seems that this trend peaked at around the year 2011 I found 30 different songs released in 2011 using the 564 core progression and it makes sense that it was about 2009 just before this peak that the actors of awesome started doing their comedy skit about how cliche and Universal this core progression is here is just some of the songs that use this core progression from the year 2010 ever feel like day I be living in a big old city and we first met in the lunchroom myoc nerve [Music] went now as with any fashion it seems that around 2010 2011 the utter saturation of this core progression led to a sudden shift away from it this core progression had become so closely associated with the sound of 2000's pop music that it now sounded quite stale and tired and songwriters seemingly started to move quite quickly away from it to the point that now in the 2020s this core progression is back at the popularity level that it was in the 1990s and perhaps it will continue to decline although I wouldn't be surprised if we see a Resurgence of its use at some point in the not too distant future much like how in the 1970s there was a Resurgence of the 12 Bar Blues rock and roll sound of the 1950s I'm sure at some point we'll see a Resurgence of this 2564 core progression Fashions often tend to go in Cycles particularly because there's a Nostalgia value to music sounding like it came out about 25 years ago now something I found quite interesting is that some artists have actually used this cor progression multiple times in fact some have used it so much they could probably actually make a whole album of songs just using this core progression I found nine aavine songs that use this cord progression I found 19 Taylor Swift songs that use this cord progression and blink182 have used this core progression in at least 15 of their songs I told you it was popular in pop punk now if you're wondering why this core progression in particular seems to be so popular so useful for writing songs I actually talked about that before in this video about some of Pop music's most common core progressions and why they work so do check that out if you're interested but I'll leave you today with the eight songs I found from 2022 that use the 1564 core progression and how can I move on when everyone I see still talks about songs need some glass that we ain't fed up I'm not going to see photographs gu the good things aen to I gave you for I could get up tomorrow talk to myself real gentle work in the garden you if we to I don't want to tell this you're just a ghost in the L we used to be the rock stars who never thought of no heart this thing we love it or hate it this core progression is definitely popular so if you can think of any other examples of this core progression then do leave them down below in the comments and thank you to everybody who made suggestions towards this list without you guys I never would have come up with so many examples of this cor progression [Music]

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 302,887

Keywords: famous four chords, axis of awesome, 1 5 6 4, chord progression, chords, songs, examples, when was the first song, music theory, analysis, history, trends

Id: U8ImkF7FMPw

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 08 2022