A new analysis of the 52 million chords used across 680,000 songs found that — to the expectation of anyone who’s strummed a guitar string or tickled the ivories — G major and C major were the most commonly found. I’ve never done either of those things — drummer, baby — so this information came as a surprising and delightful new fact. G major and C major accounted for 24 percent of all chords used, followed by D major, A major and F major. Turning their attention to chord diversity, analysts find that songs are getting less complex, containing fewer unique chords and a declining ratio of unique chords to total chords. That ratio has declined steadily from 13 percent in the 1930s to 8 percent in the 2020s. I suppose it does track that an era defined by the band Some Guy And His Orchestra, who performed music from a Tin Pan Alley fella who got paid by the note in a Depression-era WPA gig, would use every chord available to them.
Chris Dalla Riva, Can’t Get Much Higher
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