One of my favourite songs of the moment is When You Were Young by The Killers. There are lots of good things about it, but one is that it’s what I call a repeater (same short chord progression throughout, verse and chorus) and yet you don’t tend to notice. By contrast, you don’t have to listen to Champagne Supernova by Oasis many times before that hits you, not that I’m knocking it particularly. Maybe it’s partly because CS uses a tired old progression anyway, whereas When We Were Young has a fine one. It’s this:
E F# Gm B E
The reason it works so well is because the song is in B Major, which means the above translates to:
IV V vi I IV
The progression rarely goes to the I chord and doesn’t hang about there long when it does, so on the one hand you’re hearing a sound that’s mostly based around the IV, but you know it’s really rooted in the I. Now whether you know what the hell I’m talking about or not (and you may argue I don’t either), your ears/brain do know it, and that’s why it sounds good.
You may be wondering what any of this has to do with good old Bryan Adams. Well, the only other place I can think of hearing this progression, off the top of my head, is the chorus of his ‘classic’ Heaven. Whether you like the song or not it’s hard to argue with the catchyness of it, which pretty much all comes from that progression in the chorus. If you’re insane enough to have both songs, listen and you’ll see what I mean.
What I’m saying then I suppose, is that The Killers’ song is a finely distilled and concentrated version of a Bryan Adams classic. Sorry guys. I didn’t set out to say that. Since that awful film/song/video, whenever I heard Bryan Adams I see his denim clad figure standing in Sherwood Forest with an arrow flying towards his head. From now I’ll know who fired it.
P.S. Neither of the songs I claimed were ‘repeaters’ actually are, since they both make a very brief excursion elsewhere (in the case of When You Were Young, it’s a “ii vi I V” bridge). However, since I made the term up, I can do what I like.
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but I still think that When You Were Young is less connected with Heaven than you might think. Firstly, look at the chord sequence in terms of where the chords fall.
WYWY: IV | V vi | I | IV
Heaven: IV V | vi | I | IVSo, the chord structure is different in that respect. Also, we’re just looking at the chorus of Heaven. The chord sequence of the main tune is far more centred around the tonic (I). Off the top of my head, it’s as follows:
I vi V… ii vi IV/IV V
(IV/IV can also be written VIIb if you really want… as you probably know, but others reading this may not, it’s just a fourth of the fourth, or a chord of C if you’re in D major)
Enough on that…
Oh, and I am a firm believer that Bryan Adams was the original and best in terms of the song (although I appear to be alone in this view among those I know) but a very close runner-up is the candlelight mix sung by Dominique van Hulst (Do), released around the same time as she did the vocals on the DJ Sammy version. I’d encourage anyone to have a listen, it’s more an acoustic piano version as opposed to the classic ballad by Adams but a great track nevertheless.
If you want to have a musically inclined chat, leave a message on my YouTube profile – the name is “keyboardescapism”.
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