All's Phair in Love and Chords

May 30, 2015 7:48 AM

I've been trying to work out the chords to Liz Phair's "Shitloads of Money," a song which speaks to me in these trying times, so that I might play them on the ukulele. Some of them are eluding me.

Here's what I've got so far; even those bits not explicitly tagged with question marks may be wrong...

D
Louis is probably thirty years old
       E
But he looks like a solid 45
G                     A
Louis says he's got a headache
G?                      A
I look in his eyes, and I believe him

    G                  A
The big L.K.'s and the gangster disciples
D                        ?
Louis can't think of who else could take over,
    G                 A
But he just can't get up in the morning

A genuine face, braced for survival

     G   A      D
It's nice to be liked
         G         A          D
But it's better by far to get paid
G           A           D?             ?
I know that most of the friends that I have
D            Em          A
Don't really see it that way

    G            A                 D
But if you could give 'em each one wish
G           A         D
How much do you wanna bet?
G             A             D?               ?
They'd wish success for themselves and their friends
    Em           A             D
And that would include lots of money

(I'll cross the bridge when I come to it. Also, I am okay with esoteric chords, if such are used; I can figure out how to simplify them to ones I can play, but it helps to know what to aim at.)

posted by Shmuel510 to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

Best answer: Don't know the song but just tried to fake it from the YT video.

"I look in his eyes and I believe him" is maybe Em-A7?
"who else could take over" is Bm7.
You could switch from A to A7 at "A genuine face" also. (Maybe I'm hearing 7ths that aren't there but it's very common to use the 7th on V.)
"I know that most of the friends that I have" is G - A - D- F#
"Don't really see it that way" also sounds better with an A7 at the end.
Similarly, "They'd with success for themselves and their friends" is also G-A-D-F#"
posted by goingonit at 8:38 AM on May 30, 2015

Best answer: The progression under "I know that most of the friends that I have" and "they'd wish success for themselves and their friends" is G A C D. The C stands out because it's a bVII in the key of D.
posted by ludwig_van at 12:56 PM on May 30, 2015

Response by poster: Thank you, thank you!
posted by Shmuel510 at 1:50 PM on May 30, 2015

Best answer: Ludwig's right: C, not F#

I put it in 6/8 time, with 8- bar sections.

And sure the A chords can be made A7, but I'm not hearing that much, myself. This is folk or folk-rock and 7ths just don't figure much. (Someone will disagree with that) Ok, details:

FIRST SECTION, starting "louis..."
Chords are as you indicate. The trick chord, at "looks like", is Asus. Let's call this 8 bars the A SECTION

B SECTION, starting "big L. K."
Chords as you indicate BUT
"Else could take over": E (major)
"Genuine face braced for survival": Asus

C SECTION "nice to be liked" 16 bars, or 8 twice:
"Friends that I": C(major)
"Have...": D
"Don't really": D still
"See it that": G (not Em, though Em doesn't sound bad)
"Themselves and their friends" is the same chords as "friends that I have",
"That would": again, G not Em

Next section, "how many..." Is the same chords as the B SECTION except they went and elaborated the first two bars and a lot of that is on account of what the bass is playing. You can aproximate it as Asus for those two bars.

Then C section, exact same chords

Then B section chords, with guitar solo, but they skip the last two bars and go to

A section (new words? Don't remember- I'm not going back to that damn song) same chords, but repeat the last bar Amajor...

Then C section, final chorus, same chords as before, then extended last bit. As she spells m-o-n-e-y it's Cmajor.

Youre playing the A chord three fingers across the same fret? To make it Asus, raise the finger on the highest string up one fret.
posted by Rich Smorgasbord at 11:01 PM on May 31, 2015

Oh and Excuse that gripe, it was directed at my Iphone.
posted by Rich Smorgasbord at 11:13 PM on May 31, 2015

Response by poster: Thanks!

Youre playing the A chord three fingers across the same fret?

Soprano uke, not baritone. :-) The usual A is 2100 (second fret of the G string, first fret of the C string, E and A strings are left open). My chord finders have Asus2 (2402) and Asus4 (2200), of which I think I like the latter better here.
posted by Shmuel510 at 6:02 AM on June 1, 2015

"Sus2"? Newfangled nomenclature! The 4th is much more common, you can pretty much assume that "sus" by itself means sus4.
posted by Rich Smorgasbord at 12:47 PM on June 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Reporting in and wrapping this thread up... I've posted the final version of the chords to Ultimate-Guitar.com*, so that other people trying to play this will find them more easily. Also, I played this at my last ukulele meetup without flubbing too terribly many of the chords.

* Yeah, I know, the site's not called Ultimate Ukulele, but it's useful anyway.

Thank you again!
posted by Shmuel510 at 12:40 PM on June 29, 2015