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4 Chords | Music Videos | The Axis Of Awesome

The Axis of Awesome · comedy · Watch on YouTube

Music theory, synthesis & productionStand-up & sketch comedyMusic performance & songs

What it is

A comedy-music medley from the Australian band The Axis of Awesome showing that dozens of famous pop songs use the same four-chord progression. The performers cycle through a long list of hits over the same chords.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN commenters use it as the canonical demonstration that popular songs reuse one chord progression, especially in threads on music analysis and AI-generated music.

  • 3 people recommended it
  • 3 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2012, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “a 47-song medley all using the same chord progression”

    Medley of songs sharing the same four chords

    csl, 2012-06 · Recommendation · in “I analyzed the chords to 1300 popular songs for patterns. This is what I found.”

  2. “It shows the use of a set of four common chords in a lot of different songs.”

    Shows four common chords across many songs

    jcr, 2013-03 · Recommendation · in “I analyzed the chords to 1300 songs for patterns. Part 3 – Interactive Discovery”

  3. “the "4 Chords" medley by Axis of Awesome is a great demonstration of its ubiquity”

    Great demonstration of the ubiquity of one progression

    Sharlin, 2022-04 · Recommendation · in “What chords do you need?”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: four chords, pop music, music theory, medley, comedy

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