Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games”: Chord Cleverness

Even minimal differences between verse and chorus progressions is often all that’s needed.

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In the less-is-more world of modern pop song balladry, success is often in the subtleties. Songs sometimes make their greatest impact when you have to go back and listen several times before you realize why it’s working so well. A case in point is Lana Del Rey’s new hit, “Video Games” (written by Del Rey and Justin Parker) from her recently released album Born to Die. It’s the perfect demonstration of cleverness of chord choice. In particular, you’ll want to think about major versus minor, and strong beat versus weak beat.

In “Video Games”, the verse moves to the chorus rather seamlessly, with the chorus melody sitting only slightly higher in pitch than the verse. It makes the notion of “climactic moment”, that event that usually occurs in the latter half of a chorus, practically non-existent.

So with the sameness of melody throughout, and no significant climactic moment – well, as I say, success is often in the subtleties. One subtlety that bears particular scrutiny is chord choice, and specifically how to balance the use of major and minor chords in this kind of slow, dark ballad.

There are a couple of things to note regarding chords in this song. First, most of the song sits in and around the key of F# minor, and even though both verse and chorus progressions feel similar, you’ll observe a noticeable “brightening” of the tonality in the chorus. More about that in a bit.

Secondly, the harmonic rhythm (i.e., how frequently chords change) becomes slower in the chorus. In the verse, the predominant pattern is a chord change on every beat. That changes to a chord change every four beats (with a few passing-chord exceptions) in the chorus.

But there’s one more thing about chords to talk about, and it’s the issue of strong beat versus weak beat. The song is in a slow 4/4 meter, and you can feel this easily if you tap your foot to the music. As with all songs in 4/4, you get the feeling of alternating strong and weak beats.

I mentioned a brightening of the overall sound of the chords in the chorus, as we get more A major chords happening. But there’s more to it than that. In the verse, we also get A major chords, but you’ll notice that those A chords only happen on the weak beats. Strong beats mostly feature that prevalent F#m:

In the chorus, the chord choices lean a bit more toward the major, but the more significant feature is the fact that those major chords finally happen on strong beats:

Though it may seem insignificant, it’s that placement of major chords on the weak beats of the verse, and then on the strong beats of the chorus, that amount to the most notable difference between verse and chorus chord choices.

In your own songs, if you’re looking for a subtle way to manipulate the chord choices between verse and chorus, you might want to think not just about which chords to use, but also where you place them with regard to strong and weak beats.

Especially in ballads, it can be that subtlety that really makes your song work.