“How strange the change from major to minor…” —Cole Porter (‘Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye’)
Some new writers deliberately avoid using minor chords because they believe that sticking to major chords will make their songs sound happier and more positive … and consequently make listeners feel good about what they’re hearing.
But writers who completely ignore minor chords are not only missing out on being able to add greater depth and character to their songs, they’re also going against one of the most significant songwriting trends of the past 50 years.
In 2012, an academic study revealed that the number of minor chord hits has actually doubled since 1965, and fewer hit songs are now being written in major chords. Music psychologist Professor E Glenn Schellenberg and sociologist Professor Christian von Scheve evaluated more than 1,000 American Top 40 songs that charted between 1965 and 2012. Their study found that in the second half of the 1960’s, about 85% of songs that reached the top of the charts were written in a major mode, but by the second half of the 2000’s that figure had fallen to only 43.5%.
“Just as the lyrics of pop songs have become more self-referential and negative in recent decades, the music has also changed—it sounds sadder and emotionally more ambivalent,” Schellenberg and von Scheve explained in their study. They added: “Listeners of popular music today like emotionally complex pieces. The use of minor chords makes it possible to express a greater scale of emotions in a single piece of music.”
Minor chords can substantially change the mood or feel of your song. And they can often help you to emphasize or dramatize the meaning of certain words or phrases in your lyrics.
In the 1920’s, George Gershwin started enhancing Tin Pan Alley ‘pop’ songs by frequently moving between major and minor chords in the same song in order to convey an emotional shift.
Throughout the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, hundreds of rock ‘n’ roll hits were based on just three basic chord progressions. And only one of them actually included a minor chord (the classic C-Am-F-G in the key of C, or G-Em-C-D in the key of G). This progression was heavily used by almost all of the early R&B, Mo- town and Brill Building songwriters.
Then along came The Beatles. The innovative songs of John Lennon and Paul McCartney helped to introduce a greater number of minor chords to rock ‘n’ roll— resulting in some unforgettable Beatles tunes that were built on simple but unexpected chords which chromatically shifted between keys, or between major and minor.
So don’t just write in a major key. You’ll be missing out on an entire palette of emotions—and neglecting a highly effective means of making your songs sound far more interesting and edgy.
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