The most popular keys and chords

The most popular keys and chords

For many people, listening to music elicits such an emotional response that the idea of dredging it for statistics and structure can seem odd or even misguided. But knowing these patterns can give one a deeper more fundamental sense for how music works; for me this makes listening to music a lot more interesting. Of course, if you play an instrument or want to write songs, being aware of these things is obviously of great practical importance.

That said I just read a most fascinating study of 1300 popular songs on the Hooktheory site that attempts to determine the most popular song keys and chords. This is what they found:

The most popular keys in order are C, G, Eb, F, D, A, E, Db, Bb, Ab, B, F# and their relative minors.

Next came the most popular chords. First, all the songs were transposed to the key of C for a common reference point. They then found that the most popular chords were G, F, C, Am, Dm, Em, E, D, Bb, A.

Finally, they looked to see what chord should come next after an Em (or the 3m in the key of C). Surprisingly, the most popular chord was F (the 4 chord), followed by Am (the 6m), and Dm (the 2m).

One of the things that most songwriters inherently or experientially know is what chords work with others, so even that the survey didn't exactly brought much new information, it confirms this fact.