I’ve had a LOT of requests to teach this song, and it’s not hard to see why.
“Someone You Loved” is a huge hit by Scottish singer-songwriter Lewis Capaldi. It reached the #1 spot in the US, UK, Canada, and Ireland.
Lewis Capaldi says this song took him 6 months to write and complete, and that he was “bashing his head” against a wall to come up with the melodies.
Fortunately for you, it won’t take 6 months to learn, because it’s a really simple song to play on the piano.
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The return of the 1-5-6-4 chord progression.
These 4 chords make up SO many popular songs. It’s actually the reason you can learn LITERALLY hundreds of songs in just 5 days.
If these numbers don’t mean anything to you, then I’d really suggest checking out our previous lesson on these chords before you continue.
Once you know that progression, “Someone You Loved” will be super simple to play.
This riff is what makes the song. It’s the first thing you hear and sets the tone.
It’s a beautiful riff and is really easy to play because it’s just the shell of the chords you’re already playing.
Here it is for the intro:
At first glance, this might look complicated. But once you break it down it’s very easy.
The first chord is a D. And the notes in the riff are F# on top and A at the bottom. This is just the shell of a 2nd inversion D major chord! (F#-D-A)
In fact, that same pattern is used for every chord. The only difference is that sneaky little A note at the very end.
That’s the main riff, and if you can play that, you can play 90% of the song already!
So once the intro is done you can really decide how you want to play it. The original recording just repeats that riff an octave lower for pretty much the whole song.
You can do that, or you can do simple chords with your right hand and experiment with some rhythms as well.
The great thing about “Someone You Loved” is that it can be as hard or as easy as you want it to be.
There is only ONE section of this song where things get a little different. That’s…
What’s this? A NEW chord?! When we get to the bridge we see a chord we haven’t seen yet. It’s an E minor.
Again, you can either choose to play the shell of an inversion (like the original recording) or just play simple chords.
That bridge pattern only repeats twice, before we’re back in familiar territory with our 1-5-6-4 chords.
And that’s the song! Like it said it’s really easy to play, but it’s so beautiful.
So as always, have fun.
Lisa Witt has been teaching piano for more than 20 years and in that time has helped hundreds of students learn to play the songs they love. Lisa received classical piano training through the Royal Conservatory of Music, but she has since embraced popular music and playing by ear in order to accompany herself and others. Learn more about Lisa.
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