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0:00 Intro.
0:26 Examples.
2:24 How the development works.
4:23 Hook Theory.
5:06 Relative major vs. minor.
6:57 Piano outro.
Songs that use the Running Up That Hill chord progression
Click Here To Learn Piano or Keyboard
Thanks to Hooktheory for sponsoring this video. Use this link to get 20% off your first year of Chord Crush. https://www.hooktheory.com/davidbennett 🎼 I use Hook Theory myself to research these chord progression videos so I can certainly recommend it! 😀
Hey, could you please check out the song Southbound Traveler By Al Di Meola & Lean On by MØ featuring DJ Snake & Major Lazer. They literally stole that song and it has billions of views & the original one hardly has any views and was written by Al Di Meola and a famous piano composer
Now that you’ve made a video on songs that use Running Up That Hill, now you need to make a video on songs from the 80s that Stranger Things made so trending in 2022 🤣🤣🤣
I wasn’t familiar with he name of this chord progression but with all these examples I see how popular it is
Truly an 80’s chord progression
I know it as the Iron Maiden Progression, almost all of their songs use it
Plenty of popular examples of this progression. Thanks for clarifying the naming convention and key selection, David. It can get confusing at times!
This chord progression was wayy more common than I realized. I didn’t expect Bon Jovi, Evanescence, BTS and Coldplay to use all these…
also wonder wall! wowie
Just wait until you realize this is one of the most common progressions in anime openings for … the entire history of anime really
Sounds a lot like the Mario cadence, but instead if a major tonic, this one uses a minor tonic
Literally almost every Iron Maiden song has that chord progression somewhere in it
Damn ! You’re right !
This is where I first heard it.
Yeah for me it’s always been the Iron Maiden progression
These same chords, yes, but Maiden usually starts on the minor chord
Every time you played those chord, my brain kept racing back to the intro to I Want to Break Free… 😅 except that’s *actually* IV – V – vi, so much that on its third repetition it actually resolves to IV – V – I.
Great video! If we drop the 3rds and use power chords (e.g. Ab5 Bb5 C5), that progression is extremely common in hard rock and 1980s metal… (though usually in E or A)
Classic Æolian cadence. I think with Kate Bush’s song the 2nd chord is perhaps more of a Bbsus4add2 because the “right hand” continuously plays C and Eb but since the bass note is still Bb it doesn’t really change much.
We guitarists, of course, stomp all over this by playing all the chords as major, like Joe Walsh’s “Turn to Stone”. Then again, by 11 pm we’re only physically able to play power chords anyway, so it doesn’t matter.
(:
I’m glad you went into specifics about the flat six and seven because that sort of thing throws me off. I saw it as lowering the six and seven chords in the key of c minor which would have given me A double flat and B double flat.
My most favorite progression. First i consciously heard it in “the kill”. Then i started to hear it in lots of songs. That was the beginning of learning different progressions and searching for templates in music
The chorus of “Soak up the Sun” relies on a four-bar chord progression. The first bar uses the I chord, the second bar uses the V chord, the third bar climbs from the ii chord to the iii chord to the IV chord, and finally the fourth bar uses the IV chord again.
This chord progression doesn’t sound too uncommon. Are there any other songs like that? If so, which ones?
Intro synth chords to Queens “I Want to Break Free”, similar sequences used in “Bring on the Night” by the Police, also “Disintegration” by the Cure.
I feel like what makes this chord progression particularly interesting, and allows for a more subtle emotion than some, is that the entire first half of the progression, i.e. the first two chords, is major, but the final resolution is minor. So it sort of feels like the resolution, reaching the top of the hill as it were, should be a triumphant, joyous celebration, but because it’s that minor root, it isn’t all happiness and rainbows. There’s something darker.
To me that gives this progression a bit of emotional ambiguity or tension, which I really like.
This explains why I can hear Living on a Prayer merging into Running Up That Hill in my head. Thank you. Earworm explained.
And your playing at the end was so beautiful. Thank you again.
Thanks for another great installment in a great series David. It’s all excellent – the discussion, the examples, and your own improvising over the progressions.