We Need To Talk About This Chord Progression

Some additional thoughts/corrections: 1) So, funny story. I've been digging into this for weeks, and right before publishing this video I finally found a 2015 paper that's kinda sorta talking about this? Not directly, but you can extrapolate some of my arguments from it if you want. I don't think I got completely scooped here or anything, I'm adding plenty of new stuff to the conversation, but I still want to recognize the work that's been done in the area so you can check out that paper here: www.macromusic.org/journal/volume4/09_Musical_Insi… 2) There's also a broad corpus study at digitalwindow.vassar.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic… that briefly mentions it, but without any specific interrogation. All this to say that, while I'm glad I hedged a little on the whole "I discovered this!" thing because technically prior documentation exists, I still think I deserve at least some credit for it. 3) I wanted to include a clip from Mad World at the beginning but it got caught by the copyright bot and I didn't feel like it was central enough to be worth fighting over. Sorry. 4) As you can probably tell from the number of times I said "last week" when the video I was referring to was two weeks ago, this video was supposed to come out last week. Scheduling stuff pushed it back and I didn't feel like rerecording 'cause I'm lazy and, in the grand scheme of things, what even is a week, y'know? 5) If you want to see this loop in action, Benny from Axis Of Awesome did a medley of 10 songs with it: https://youtu.be/83aqGYsRgAY

It’s the “I only know these chords on guitar” progression

As a guitarist, I'm gonna blame this on standard tuning.

Any chord progression is stable as long as David Bowie is singing over it.

I can't believe you didn't end this video with ""Anyway, here's wonderwall".

Imagine his sheet music doodles were the only evidence of human existence

"Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagal the Cascade?"

Another interesting thing to note about this progression (and its relative the Axis progression) is that it can very easily be played using the basic open chords on a guitar in standard tuning. For a rock-oriented beginning guitarist, E/Em, A/Am, G, D, and C are probably the very first chords they learn. This means that songs using the plagal cascade and the Axis progression are both easy to learn and easy to write with minimal experience. They also translate well to another popular and easy rock technique, power chords. When you combine this ease of access with their suitability for rock/pop styles, it's no surprise that they're among the most popular of chord progressions.

"After all, I'm only human..." *draws an elephant*

I feel like we should call it the Allied progression

I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about this chord progression

This is my “lets see if I’m in tune” progression and I had no clue it was actually used in songs.

I've just always thought of this chord progression as being Dorian. Or at least that's how I've come about playing it on my own.

For those who know the four chords of pop from Axis of Awesome (or just like mashups), their keyboardist has a video mashing up songs that use this progression. It's on his channel BennyTheJukebox and is called Another Four Chords.

If you're looking for an actual minor, early, "looping" example of this chord progression, check out Serge Gainsbourg's "Bonnie and Clyde" from 1968 ! It's a song that I always thought sounded remarkably modern, and the chords are definitely part of that.

i love the name "plagal cascade" but i can't stop thinking about half-life "I never thought I'd see a plagal cascade, let alone create one..."

Agree with all of the “Dorian” comments... to me this is the “Dorian” progression.

I saw "somebody" coming from a mile away and your execution of that part still landed perfectly. Kudos!

First song that popped I into my head when I saw this progression was Boulevard of broken dreams

6:08 that's some fluid equation writing.