Axis of Awesome - 4 Four Chord Song (with song titles)
Why Hacker News recommends it
The go-to reference in threads on chord progressions, pop music similarity and music copyright.
What it is
Australian comedy group Axis of Awesome perform a sketch showing that dozens of pop hits share the same four chords. It was recorded at the 2009 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2012 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends cycomanic · 2022-03 · on “I became the world's most prolific DJ, using code”
I suspect the "appealing" melodies amongst this are likely a small subset of the the total set. The whole story reminded me of this axis of awesome (OZ comedy group) song (well worth watching): [this video]
Recommends BrandoElFollito · 2023-05 · on “Ed Sheeran Demonstrates How Copyright Is Destroying Musicians”
I think nobody linked to Axis of Awsome's 4 Chords Song yet. A good example of chords vs. songs: [this video]
Cites fferen · 2012-06 · on “I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found.”
When I was young and learning music theory in piano lessons, one day I realized that literally half the songs on the radio used the chord progression "I V vi IV". This was a huge revelation to me! To my dismay, I couldn't find any evidence on the internet that anyone else had noticed this, until very recently I saw the "Four Chord Song" by Axis of Awesome ( [this video] ). I was hoping to see some mention of that in this article, but was disappointed.
Cites joelrunyon · 2014-01 · on “One Man Has Written Virtually Every Major Pop Song Of The Last 20 Years.”
Interesting to see similarities in musical preferences & identifying common threads that lead to popularity. This video / song [1] was viral a few years ago because it demonstrated the similarities between major popular songs spanning multiple decades through the use of just four chords.. [1] [this video]
Cites TheOtherHobbes · 2015-08 · on “Classical music generation with recurrent neural networks”
Pop has actually ossified over the last ten years or so. Dubstep is more than fifteen years old now, and the Paul Van Dyk album I've just listened to sounds a lot like the last Paul Van Dyk album a few years ago. Then you get this: [LINK] and this: [LINK] and the now famous this: [this video] and you start to wonder how much entropy there is to analyse. Modern classical has gone the way of modern art. It's now basically a marketing exercise. The musical experience is secondary. But then I expect creative AIs to be better at marketing too...
Cites skwosh · 2015-11 · on “The Musicians Behind One of the Most Sampled Songs in History Finally Got Paid”
It is kind of absurd. Music is intrinsically about reuse, recycling, and reinvention [1]. Sampling is really just a continuation of that. [1] Axis of Awesome, The Four Chord Song, [this video]
Cites pdkl95 · 2018-03 · on “Appeals Court Says It's Okay to Copyright an Entire Style of Music”
> a lot of pop is made by knowingly and deliberately copying elements from various source songs One of the defining characteristics of "pop" music is the reuse of major structural elements like the primary harmonic progression (e.g. the infamous "4 chords"[1]). Listeners that do not have a lot of music theory knowledge and experience can still follow along with the "plot" of the song because it reuses simple structures they already know. Appreciation of more complex harmonic structure and other unique features requires a lot more experience with complex types of music theory. As with all art/writing, knowing your intended audience is important. If the audience includes people without music e
Cites Double_Cast · 2018-05 · on “Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming”
I didn't learn music through Youtube. So unfortunately, I'm not familiar with any videos that I would consider comprehensive or canonical. At best, I can share videos that highlight a particular pattern, or share examples of popular songs that I recognize as having a commonality. Which might give you a better feel for what music theory is. Another thing to keep in mind is that musical patterns accrete into genres. And there's a wide variety of genres. So it's difficult for any single video to cover everything in detail. I think it's more common for videos to cover the patterns of a particular genre. E.g. if you're interested in Blues, consider searching for videos about Blues. ----- [LINK] I