Ed Sheeran proves you can play every pop song with four chords

Ed Sheeran once proved that you can play pretty much any pop song on the guitar with just four chords.

If there’s one man who knows what he’s doing with a guitar, it’s everyone’s favourite ginger, good ol’ Ed Sheeran.

He must have made hundreds of the UK’s biggest chart-topping singles on the six-stringed instrument, and now he’s here to tell us that actually, the entire process is really not that hard.

Ed claimed that the hidden secret behind every pop song is just four chords, and once you have them mastered, you could become a bit of an Ed Sheeran yourself.

Ed Sheeran certainly knows his stuff when it comes to writing a pop song. (Ian Gavan/Getty Images)

The four chords can change depending on what key the song is in, but it’s all to do with chord progression, which if you’re into your music, will make a lot of sense.

The technical term for the name of the common progression is I-V-vi-IV.

Ed was a guest appearing on the Dutch talk show RTL Late Night a few years ago when he showcased to the world this incredible skill.

The chords, in Ed's case, were Em (E minor), C, G and D.

Ed was asked by the host to play songs by Passenger, Craig David (although subtitles implied Greg David - we're still trying to find out who he is), the Spice Girls and Beyonce.

He managed to play every single one whilst sipping on wine, but was stumped by a Michael Jackson classic.

And whilst ‘Beat It’ might have been able to be played with the chords, Ed just didn’t know it.

Finally, he ended his impromptu acoustic set with a full rendition of ‘Uptown Funk’ by Mark Ronson, which the crowd went wild for.

The 'Shape of You' singer showed off his 'four chord' theory. (Instagram/@teddysphotos)

But Ed has witnessed first hand how these songs can all sound so similar, after winning a dispute which suggested his 2014 hit ‘Thinking Out Loud’ was a rip off of Marvin Gaye’s 1973 hit ‘Let’s Get it On’.

Ed had been sued by the relations of Ed Townsend, the songwriter who composed the slow classic with Gaye, and had been accused of copying the song’s harmonic progressions as well as melody and rhythm without permission.

Speaking after winning his copyright trial, he said: “I feel like in the songwriting community, everyone sort of knows that there’s four chords primarily that are used and there’s eight notes.

“We work with what we’ve got, with doing that.”

Topics: Ed Sheeran, Music