Easy Pop Songs for Guitar - Modern Guitar Approach

These easy pop songs by Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Imagine Dragons and Bruno Mars will keep your tween and teen students busy for weeks! They use simple chords and teach great musical concepts to help learn accompaniment and tablature techniques without even realizing that you are learning. Songs are listed in order from easiest to hardest.

FIRST SONG

Shake it Off – Taylor Swift

I use this song with my beginning students to incentivize them to start using the full C Chord. This works well, because Am7 is basically a 4 string C chord where you strum 5 strings instead of 4 so the song won’t wound like it changes chords unless you use the full C Chord. I keep the strum pattern simple as well by strumming down half notes two times per measure.

Shake It Off - by Taylor Swift. This is an easy beginner guitar song that only uses 3 chords. It is also a great way to learn the Am7 chord. The strum pattern is also a very easy strum pattern of all down strums.
#learnguitar #guitarlessons — Shake It Off

SECOND SONG

You Belong With Me – Taylor Swift

The next easiest song in the line-up is also from Taylor Swift. Many of her songs are easy to play. This song uses the D chord. If my students haven’t learned the D chord yet, I will usually teach them Happy Birthday first , because it teaches D in a way that is easy to learn. If you try playing this song to the recording, you may notice that it doesn’t sound quite right, that’s because the song is tuned down a half step. This means that every string on the guitar is tuned a half step lower.

I put together 4 different strum pattern options and the PDF file has all 4 options (available to subscribers only). My favorite strum patterns is the first option in the file and looks like this:

To play this strum pattern, you need to understand what a tie is.:

You Belong With Me - By Taylor Swift. This easy pop song is a great beginner song that is easy to play. It only uses 4 chords and helps to teach the Am7 chord to new players. #learnguitar #guitarlessons — You Belong With Me

THIRD SONG

Somewhere in Brooklyn – Bruno Mars

This isn’t one of Bruno Mars’ most popular songs, but I have a 10 year old student who really wanted to learn this one. The song has some new open chords which make it a great song for increasing your open chord vocabulary. It is also a great song to use when introducing Barre Chords. The Bm7 chord can also be played as the Bm Barre Chord.

one additional note, make sure to play this song with a capo on the 1st fret

I have made three strum pattern options for this song and all are in the PDF files that are available to subscribers.

Somewhere In Brooklyn - By Bruno Mars. This easy pop song is a great beginner song to learn on the guitar. This song also helps to teach the Bm7 chord which isn't as hard as it sounds. There are 4 strum pattern options available for this song. #learnguitar #guitarlessons — Somewhere In Brooklyn

FOURTH SONG

Photograph – Ed Sheeran

Don’t let the chord name Fmaj7sus2 get you down because it’s one of the easiest chords out there to play and it sounds great, especially in this song.

The actual strum pattern in this song is a bit different that what I decided to use. Using a capo in this song makes it easier to play, but it makes using a lot of dead strums difficult. So instead, I set up the strum pattern in a way that sounds great if you lightly hit the strings with your fingers or palm of your hand instead.

I also put in the tablature in for the beginning part. If you are new to tablature, just remember that the highest strings (1st string) are on the top of the TAB staff and that the lowest strings are on the bottom.

Photograph - by Ed Sheeran. This easy guitar song uses only 4 chords. It also teaches a great tab intro and how to strum using what's called the dead strum technique. #learnguitar #guitarlessons

FIFTH SONG

Radiaoactive- Imagine Dragons

The more I looked into creating sheet music for this song, I realized that there are a lot of different interpretations out there on how to best play it. The band doesn’t use a capo (2nd fret), but I set it up that way to make it easier to play. I use this song to teach about accents and how they work.