best one chord song?

Then, there isn't a song anymore.

-- Geir Hongro (geirhon...), June 14th, 2005.

Geir, don't you ever tire of being wrong? I mean, on a basic, fundamental, dictionary-definition level, YOU ARE WRONG. Give up already, it's okay to say that there are ways of writing songs that you dislike, you don't have to exclude them from being music altogether.

-- The Ghost of Dan Perry (djperr...), June 14th, 2005.

It's not "wrong" to say that a "song" has to have a "melody". By dictionary definition, it does have to have a melody.

I'm so happy that I get to be the first to mention this song.

I'm afraid it is.

explain how it isn't please.

It is SO not C#.

The main riff is, but other chords be droppin' later.

but surely this definition isn't still relevant. what with avant garde, noise, various types of non-Western music...

At least I think it is. I think Tim Butler said it was one chord.

does that one win for longest song without a chord change?

Daydreamer.

One chord? Are you deaf?

hum...to me there's a slight change with D#. but haven't listened to it in a while so i may be wrong...

Sonic Youth play "Within You Without You" as a one-chorder on Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father.

Very few of James Brown's funk-era songs are actually on a single chord--there's almost always a bridge (which is almost always on a IV chord).

Don't have the first version at hand, but the songbook I have for Sly's "Riot" has that version as A7. "Riot" is just about my favorite album ever.

[Sung]

This song has one chord
This song has one chord
This song has one chord

[Spoken]

And that's why you're bored

[Sung]

One chord
You're Bored
One chord
You're bored

If you're talking about a song, not just one instrument, chords are formed by all the notes you hear. If the singer hits a note that's NOT part of that chord, it changes the chord of the song to something else.

None of George Harrison's Beatles songs are one-chord.

Fetishization of difficulty as a prog-rock shibboleth and all that.

If we can find a song that doesn't require a lot of chords to play [meaning, here, guitar chords] and is undeniably a fantastic song, then the equation of "knowing a lot of chords" with "making good music" can be further shown to be a false equation. It opens out, then, into the larger discussion of Does Technique Help or Harm?

Now that I think about it, though, one might add that inasmuch as the comparatively-hard-to-perceive pitches of drums and cymbals and other percussion instruments play into the finished sound of a song, then those ought also to be counted in with the "chord" that is being played by the band. Also harmonic resonances in the room, as well as sounds supplied by effects (e.g., reverb and chorus) would also have to be considered, as they will almost never be exactly the same note as the singer/instrumentalist is making. Isn't that in fact the whole point of a chorus effect, that one copy of the sound is detuned slightly?

So there may not in fact BE any one-chord songs if you follow that logic.

Well, hmm, I mean this doesn't sound right to me. The structure of a song--talking in the language-of-chords/harmonic language kinda thing--is unchanged whether you decide to sing or play a note over that's "not in the chord." Lester Young did it all the time, and he was playing the song, right? He wasn't changin' the chord, he was having fun with what the overall structure implied. This is basically what jazz does, right? The whole point of learning all the stuff you have to learn to be able to play jazz is to deveop that facility; re-harmonizing. I think what you're talking about is what I'd call "arranging." If I'm playing a song that has a B7 and a D-flat in it, and I play an F natural over the B7, it doesn't change the fact that the chord is B7--I'm, I hope, playing the F natural because I want to say something about the D-flat chord, which contains a F natural, not because I'm somehow "changing the B7 into another chord."

Right, I mean playing or singing something NOT contained in the chord.

Obviously dissonance is a gray area, I'll buy that you're hearing a variation of the same chord sometimes. But if your ear hears it as a change or a progression, it probably is one. Sometimes chord changes are implied by nothing but one changed note, and you hear it as a change.

Doesn't rockism generally hail chops, up to a certain point?

Just trying to maintain ILM's much-vaunted civility.

Uh, wrong.

None of George Harrison's Beatles songs are one-chord.

http://www.simpsonspark.com/images/whitepages/hutz_lionel.jpg
That was a right-pretty speech, sir.

Although the Harrison songs don't match the proper definition of a true one-chord song, they do all contain instruments which plays 5 chords throughout the songs' entireties. So there is at least one instrument which plays only one chord for the whole song, and the bass notes remain stagnant as well. It may not fit the definition you're anticipating, but it does answer what the question was asking.