Music Chord Trends: Major Shifts and Surprising Simplicity
Summary
A surprising analysis reveals that while popular music has grown more repetitive with simpler chord progressions over time, the most common chords across genres remain basic major triads like G and C, defying assumptions about increasing complexity.
Key Points
- The most common chords across genres are simple major chords like G major and C major, but usage varies significantly by genre
- The prevalence of 7th chords has declined over time, from 27.7% of chords in the 1940s to 8.25% in the 2020s so far
- While chord progressions have become more repetitive since the 1960s-70s, with the median unique chord rate falling from 13% to 8%, songs are not necessarily less complex overall