When did the Axis chord progression become so popular?

Comments · 994

• DA

  @DavidBennettPiano · 3 years ago (edited) · pinned

  📌 SMALL REVISION: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8ImkF7FMPw&amp;t=488">8:08</a> &quot;Treacherous&quot; by Taylor Swift doesn&apos;t actually use the Axis progression, my mistake! However, I&apos;ve now found two more Taylor song that I had missed that DO use the Axis progression... &quot;Christmas Must Be Something More&quot; and &quot;Crazier&quot;, so Taylor has actually used the progression at least 20 times! 😅😅

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• ER

  @ericdoe2318 · 3 years ago

  Aww shit… it’s even my bank code

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• WA

  @wademartin4209 · 3 years ago

  Maybe people can stop saying that pop punk only uses 3 chords. We use 4!

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• DE

  @DeGuerre · 3 years ago (edited)

  Fun fact: In 1980, Status Quo did a &quot;best of&quot; album where every song is a gold-record-selling 12 bar blues. It&apos;s called, amusingly, &quot;12 Gold Bars&quot;.

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• IA

  @iainlindley · 3 years ago

  I’d never noticed that “Please Play This Song On The Radio” uses the axis progression but that’s entirely in line with the song’s joke - it’s deliberately as catchy and radio-friendly as possible before ending with a string of expletives and the refrain “can’t play this song on the radio”.

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• ZV

  @Zveebo · 3 years ago

  I wonder how much the Axis of Awesome skit directly contributed to its decline in the 2010s. I remember the sketch being pretty popular pretty quickly, at least in the UK, and I imagine any songwriters hearing it must have been very conscious of it if they started to think about including the progression in songs after that.

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• RE

  @Reorganiser · 3 years ago

  I mean it&apos;s such a big thing that Jimi Hendrix literally named on of his albums &quot;Axis: Bold as Love&quot; with the song &quot;Bold as Love&quot; actually using the axis chord progression. What a chad

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• ON

  @onpoc · 3 years ago

  I call it the &quot;let it be&quot; progression. It was the first song I learned to play that uses that progression.

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• TI

  @tim_brooks · 3 years ago

  anyone else say “beato” after every time he said “1 5 6 4?”

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• HE

  @HedeccaTamer · 3 years ago

  Pachelbel&apos;s Canon In D, Rob P did the Axis thing long before Axis did it, and I think the cultural shift was Torn by Natalie Imbruglia

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• MA

  @mattiat.6697 · 3 years ago

  I think there&apos;s another reason why this progression is getting rarer nowadays: in the last ten years minor key (especially aeolian) has become more popular than major in charts&apos; songs.

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• TH

  @theplaylister · 3 years ago (edited)

  When you explained that this chord progression is the 12 bar blues progression of the 90s and 2000&apos;s - it made me want to know what are they other &quot;go-to&quot; chord progressions of each musical era in the past century. Maybe an idea for future videos?

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