The Most COMPLEX Pop Song of All Time

Rick Beato · 8.3M views · 2021 · 20:28

Open on YouTube

Music theory, synthesis & productionMusic performance & songsexplainer

Why Hacker News recommends it

Cited in discussions of chord complexity and key changes in pop music.

What it is

Rick Beato analyzes a pop song he argues is among the most harmonically complex ever, breaking down its chords and key changes. It is a music theory deep dive aimed at general music fans.

Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2022 to 2023.

What Hacker News said

Cites bambax · 2022-04 · on “What chords do you need?”

The obligatory video is of course "Four Chords" by Axis of Awesome: [LINK] Rick Beato has kind of the opposite video about "the most complex song ever": [this video] The song in question is Never Gonna Let You Go by Sergio Mendes; plenty of videos exist of it; here's one live: [LINK]

Cites stickfigure · 2022-11 · on “The death of the key change”

Reminds me of this breakdown of "Never Gonna Let You Go" by Sergio Mendez: [this video] That song makes everything else look like amateur hour. Somehow it hit #4 on the Billboard Top 100 in 1983. I think I'll stick to bluegrass. In G.

Cites Rochus · 2023-01 · on “Pop2Piano: Pop Audio-Based Piano Cover Generation”

That's amazing, congrats to the authors. Wonder how it would perform on harmonically more complex pop songs (e.g. [this video] ).