These easy pop songs for guitar are great for younger learners. Looking to play some trending audio? Check out these 5 tracks.
What Pop Songs Should a Beginner Guitarist Learn?
All About Easy Pop Songs for Younger Learners:
- These five easy pop songs are ideal starting points for younger beginner guitarists. They use achievable chords and basic techniques to build confidence.
- Modern pop songs are a great way for younger players to learn guitar. They teach core skills, whilst also allowing the player to play something that they know and enjoy.
- You don’t need loads of skills to play these pop hits. These songs from the likes of Olivia Dean, Harry Styles and Sam Fender are accessible starting points for developing players.
Man I Need – Olivia Dean
Starting off our look at easy pop songs for guitar, we have this charming earworm from Olivia Dean. Having hit over 4 million Spotify streams since its recent release, let’s see why Man I Need is a great beginner guitar song.
The main form of the song works around two chords: C/E and F. As a beginner, they may look scary; however, they’re easy to get under your fingers. The C/E is what we call a slash chord. All we need to do to achieve this is add the low E string on top of your regular C chord.
The F chord is feared amongst most beginner guitarists. Therefore, as a guitar teacher, I’d recommend a beginner switch it out for Fmaj7 instead. This is very similar to a regular C chord, just with your second and third fingers moved down a string. These two chords form the verses and the choruses, whereas the pre-chorus chucks in an Am and a G/B to provide some movement.
Golden – Harry Styles
Next up with our easy pop songs for guitar, we’re going slightly older, back to 2020. However, Harry Styles remains one of the music scene’s most prominent artists. Golden is a great, easy pop song for beginners that any fan should check out.
Likewise, we’ve got some great open chords that form the foundation of any guitar players skillset. Golden uses C, Em, D and Bm. What makes this less of an easy pop song for guitar is the rhythm. Why is that?
Most beginner guitar songs have chords that last for equal lengths. Whereas Golden mixes this up, giving it the summer vibe that it has. Essentially, we stay on the C chord for four bars, sixteen beats, but we actually play the last two beats of that four-bar phrase on Em before hitting a D chord. The D major has the same duration, but adds Bm in before heading back to the C chord. The diagram below shows what to expect.
Harry Styles has used various guitars throughout his solo career. However, at his live shows, he’s usually seen with something Gibson and semi-hollow. Something that could get close to that would be an *Epiphone Broadway.
Blinding Lights – The Weeknd
This is perhaps one of the easiest, easy pop songs for guitar. Despite being a few years old now, this hit by The Weeknd is still played on radio stations across the globe. Furthermore, this is a great opportunity to learn how to use a *guitar capo. Something that you’ll need throughout your learning journey.
By placing the capo on the 3rd fret of the neck, we’ve raised the pitch of the guitar. Allowing for easier chord access for certain songs. In this case, we need to play Dm, Am, C and G. These repeat throughout the track.
For beginners, I’d recommend playing each chord for eight beats, which is equivalent to two bars. Feel free to add any strumming patterns in, but a great starting point would be to just use downstrokes.
Driver’s Licence – Olivia Rodrigo
Olivia Rodrigo’s Driver’s Licence was born into a world of trending TikTok audio, and therefore had 76 million streams in its first week. Wow. Huge chart success, yet very basic chords.
This easy pop song for guitar isn’t technically for guitar. If you listen closely, you’ll mainly hear piano underneath the vocal. However, we can still play the piano chords on guitar. Let’s check them out.
Again, you’ll need a capo on the 3rd fret of the guitar. From here, we need to play G, Em and C chords for the majority of the track. These will get you by throughout the verses and most of the chorus, where we add a Bm.
Rein Me In – Sam Fender
Concluding our look at easy pop songs for guitarists, we have the most successful track in this lineup. Not only is it the second appearance for Olivia Dean, but Rein Me In has spent 19 non-consecutive weeks at No.1 in the charts. This song is everywhere! Let’s learn it.
This time, instead of looking at the chords to an easy pop song, we’ll be checking out the riff via TAB. All beginners should look into learning guitar TAB because it’s a universal language amongst players.
The TAB below shows how to play the Rein Me In Riff. There are some open strings in here, along with a hammer-on. All good to learn as soon as possible.
When recording Rein Me In, Sam Fender used anything but his name. On the record, you get the solid and jangly tones of a *Gretsch White Falcon, along with a timeless *Gibson Les Paul Goldtop.
Videos
Further Information
- Guitar Maintenance
- Sweet Child O’ Mine: Why Every Guitarist Should Learn It
- Advanced Chord Techniques
*This post contains affiliate links and/or widgets. When you buy a product via our affiliate partner, we receive a small commission that helps support what we do. Don’t worry, you pay the same price. Thanks for your support!
The post Easy Pop Songs for Guitar: 5 Modern Hits for Beginners appeared first on gearnews.com.