In 1969, The Beatles released “Something” on their Abbey Road album. Written primarily by George Harrison, this song features what I consider to be a perfect chord progression. Let’s break down each chord and explore why this progression works so well.
But first…I know some people say you shouldn’t analyze music – you should just feel it. But I think analysis makes you a better musician. It’s like wanting to become a good chef by learning from your grandmother’s recipes – you could experiment for 50 years and eventually figure things out, but it’s much more efficient to learn from those who’ve already mastered their craft.
When I analyze what George Harrison did in this song, I gain insight into the “ingredients” he used and how he assembled them. This doesn’t diminish the emotional impact of the music – it enhances my understanding of why it works so well, and only adds to my enjoyment of music overall.
The Verse: Descending Chromaticism
The song opens with four simple chords:
The first three chords contain a line cliche – a steady triad (C, in this case) with a melody that moves in stepwise motion above or below it. The effect is almost sedative, like that blissful feeling of sinking back in your seat. It perfectly complements the romantic nature of the lyrics.
That melody within the chords starts on C and moves down through B → Bb → A. Bb is not in the key of C, but it’s showing up as part of C7, which we can call a secondary dominant chord. It pulls our ear strongly toward our next chord, F, since C7 is the dominant chord of F.
Building Tension with Ascending Motion
After the F major chord, we get a D7 that seems to come out of nowhere. But D7 is actually another secondary dominant – it’s the dominant chord of G, which is exactly where it takes us.
Here’s where things get interesting: we now have ascending chromaticism. From the earlier F chord (with natural F), to D7 (with F#), to G (with G natural). This creates the opposite effect of our opening – instead of that relaxed, descending feeling, we now have rising tension and anticipation.
The Deceptive Resolution
Here’s a clever compositional trick: after building all that tension with the ascending motion to G, the V chord, you’d expect the progression to resolve back to C major. Instead, it goes to A minor – a deceptive cadence that resolves to the vi chord instead of the I chord.
Once we land on A minor, the vi chord, we get another line cliche. This time we’re treating A minor as our temporary tonic and creating a descending chromatic line on top: A → G# → G → F#.
Again, we have three measures where the triad stays the same (Am) but the notes on top form different chords. In this case we see three variations of that Am, before diving into D9. D9 is just a slightly-more-interesting version of the D7 we saw earlier, so we’ll label it as another secondary dominant.
Most interestingly though, we see this section contains the somewhat-rare minor-major-seventh chord. This is one of my favorite chords and it’s explored in depth, along with these other concepts, in my book The Chord Progression Codex. I also made this video showcasing its basic uses.
The Turnaround: Borrowed Chords in Action
The turnaround section features an unexpected progression: F major → Eb major → G over D → C major.
We can see that this is just a standard IV – V – I movement that has been interrupted by a peculiar Eb.
Eb is not in the key of C major… but it is in the key of C minor! And “borrowing” the chords from the parallel (not relative) minor key this way is quite a popular thing to do. Try substituting other chords borrowed from C minor (like Ab major or Bb major) in the same spot – you’ll get similar but subtly different effects.
The Modulation to A Major
Though the chord progression we just observed resolves well to a C chord, later on in the song it will resolve to a surprising A.
Once that A rings, the song will completely shift into the key of A major for a temporary bit of time. This is a fairly unique type of key-change, especially for a love or pop ballad where most key-changes are a half or whole step up. However, there is a relationship between the key of A and C: C major has a relative minor key of Am, and Am has a parallel major key of A.
The Bridge: Lament Bass
In this new key of A major, we hear a diatonic chord progression that features a lament bass – that’s a bass line that moves down from the tonic to the key’s fifth. In this case, it’d be A → G# → F# → E. The following chords support that bass movement:
After that, we move to D, the IV chord, and then a bright and optimistic G before resolving to A to repeat things. G is not in this key, but once again we can drag it in and call it a borrowed chord since it lives in the parallel key of Am.
In this specific instance, though, it’d be wiser to say that this bVII chord is borrowed from A Mixolydian – there’s no reason to drag the minor scale into this conversation, since this new chord only requires us to lower the 7th of our major scale. This popular movement from G to A, bVII – I, is commonly called a “backdoor cadence.”
Back Home to C Major
The final surprise comes on this section’s repeat, when that G major chord resolves not back to A major, but to C major, taking us right back to the opening progression. Since G is the dominant of C, this resolution makes harmonic sense, but it’s completely unexpected in context.
Conclusion
This song contains many of my favorite songwriting and theory concepts, all of which I cover in my courses like the Theory and Songwriting Course, and my book the Chord Progression Codex. If you like this kind of analysis, or if you’re struggling to understand the terminology used here, I believe they will help you!
