🧠...should we kill the four-chord song?

Hey music maker!

A music writer named Ted Gioia published an essay last month called Let’s Kill the Four-Chord Song. It’s getting a lot of engagement right now, and rightfully so.

His argument: the formula is stale, genres haven’t evolved much since 2000, and audiences are quietly turning away from new music toward old records. The data backs it up.

Young listeners are increasingly choosing songs from before they were born over what’s charting today.

I was happy to come across this article because a few months back I posted something on Threads that hit the same nerve:

“Too many modern songs use the boring 1-6-4-5 pattern. Earth, Wind & Fire mastered harmonic storytelling... Chord movement = emotion. Let’s normalize great progressions.”

This post got a lot of attention: 21,000 views. 689 likes. 49 shares.

People feel this.

Ted’s piece ends at the diagnosis. Here’s the treatment, from the creator’s side.

In today's issue:

Key: A Dorian

Time Signature: 4/4

Progression (Nashville Numbers):
1m/3 - 7/2 - 5m - 4 - 4/1 - 2m

Ending variation: 4 - 2m

As letters in the key:
Am/C - G/B - Em - D - D/A - Bm

Bass line with inversions (what you hear):
C - B - E - D - A - B

Bass line without inversions (root position):
A - G - E - D - D - B

The inversions create an interesting bass melody that you can hear and feel in the character of the record, and it’s very fitting for a Lana Del Rey track.

I played the bass line in root position and much prefer the voicings with the inversions.

The song would still have been good, but not as moody and interesting melodically.

Studying popular music is a reasonable starting point. I did it. Most producers and songwriters do. The songs are good, the production is worth decoding, and you can pull a lot from them.

The harmony side is where it gets tricky, though.

When a large portion of what you’re studying runs off the same four chords, you pick those up quickly and then there isn’t much more to take harmonically.

The pool you study from shapes the instincts you develop. If most of your source material lives in the same harmonic space, that space is what your ear reaches for when you sit down to write.

Theory study helps, but it isn’t enough on its own. Theory without source material is just rules.

What makes it click is hearing it in action, in songs you love, where someone already made the harmonic decision, and it worked.

So for the creators, until the four-chord songs stop dominating, we have to be more intentional about choosing source material that shows us more.

Major and natural minor are the most common tonal environments in modern pop. Their chord options overlap significantly since every natural minor key shares its chords with a relative major.

Modes give you a quick route into different colors. One note change from natural minor gets you into Dorian, and that one change gives you different diatonic chords and consequently a different set of available moves.

That’s what “13 Beaches” is benefiting from. Dorian’s raised sixth gives you a major 4 chord (D major instead of D minor) and a minor 2 chord (B minor instead of B diminished). Those chord qualities don’t exist the same way in the common environments.

The progression in that song isn’t possible from a natural minor or major starting point.

Then add the inversions.

With the progression in root position, the bass movement goes: A - G - E - D - D - B.

“13 Beaches” uses slash chords or inversions. With them, the bass movement is: C - B - E - D - A - B.

That melodic shape influences the emotional texture of the song.

If you want to keep what you find when you sit with songs like this: the progressions, the inversion choices, the root motion, rhythms, and even arrangement ideas, Sound Patch is where that library lives.