Striking a chord
Here's an easy way to see if a song uses the Sensitive Female Chord Progression: Just sing Joan Osborne's lyric's: 'What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us?' over the suspect four chords.
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So what is the Sensitive Female Chord Progression, exactly? It's simple enough for the music theory-inclined: vi-IV-I-V. No good? Well, for a song in the key of A minor, it would be Am-F-C-G. Still confused? Here's an easy way to see if a song uses the chord progression: Just sing Osborne's lyrics, "What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us?" over the suspect four chords. If it fits, you've just spotted one in the wild. Once you're attuned to it, you'll hear it everywhere.
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It turns out I'm not the only one intrigued by this phenomenon. Hooters guitarist Eric Bazilian, the songwriter behind "One Of Us," has a particular interest in it. "I think it's a comforting chord progression," he says. "It was iconic with Heart. It became more iconic with Joan [Osborne]. It became even more iconic with Sarah McLachlan. There's not a lot of testosterone in it, even though ['One of Us'] was written by a man. But it was written by a man to impress a girl. Think about that."
The guys play with this chord progression too, of course. Boston's "Peace of Mind" and Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" gave it a whirl in the mid-1970s. The Smashing Pumpkins made it orchestral and ominous with "Disarm," Bon Jovi turned it into a pop-metal fist-pumper on "It's My Life," and the Offspring has used it no less than three times.
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Songwriters reuse certain chord progressions all the time, from the 12-bar blues to the doo-woppish I-vi-IV-V (forever familiar to novice piano players as "Heart and Soul") that helped dominate the 1950s with songs like "Earth Angel" and "Donna."
