Easy Guitar Songs for Beginners, Ranked by Real Difficulty

Most lists of easy songs to play on guitar have the same quiet problem. Easy is a word, not a measurement, so the same list can hold a two-chord folk song and a track whose right hand takes a year. Here, easy means a level. Every song below is placed on a scale of eight levels, L1 to L8, the one a guitar teacher in Paris uses with his adult students, and nothing is called easy for everyone. A song is easy for a player, at a point in their progress, and that is the only sense in which the word says anything useful.

Level 1: open chords, steady strumming

Level 1 asks for open chord shapes, a strumming figure that repeats, and changes slow enough that your left hand can arrive in time. Nothing here needs a barre chord, a fast tempo or a syncopation you have to count.

That makes these 24 titles the easiest guitar songs in our catalog, and the honest place to start if you have had the guitar for a few weeks.

Song	Artist	Chords	Arrangement
"Heroes"	David Bowie	4 (D, G, C, Em)
A Horse With No Name	America	4 (Em, D6, F#, B)
Ain't No Sunshine	Bill Withers	6
Come as You Are	Nirvana	5
Cream	Prince	4 (A, D, E, D/F#)
Give Peace a Chance	John Lennon	4 (C, A, G, D)
I Belong to You	Lenny Kravitz		No barre chords
Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam	Nirvana	3 (E, D, A)
Just My Imagination	The Cranberries	4 (G, D, Am7, Em)
Knocking on Heaven's Door	Bob Dylan	4 (G, D, C, Am)
Riders on the Storm	The Doors	4 (Em, Am, C, D)
Simple Man	Lynyrd Skynyrd	3 (C, G, Am)
Stand By Me	Ben E. King		No barre chords
Stir It Up	Bob Marley	3 (A, D, E)
Stuck in the Middle With You	Stealers Wheel	5
Thank You	Alanis Morissette	14
The Scientist	Coldplay		No barre chords
Three Little Birds	Bob Marley	3 (A, D, E)
Used to Love Her	Guns N' Roses	3 (D, A, G)
What's Up?	4 Non Blondes		No barre chords
Wicked Game	Chris Isaak		No barre chords
With or Without You	U2	4 (D, A, Bm, G)
You Can't Always Get What You Want	The Rolling Stones	3 (C, F, D)
Zombie	The Cranberries	4 (Em, C, G, D/F#)

A song listed as no barre chords is a separate arrangement, written to stay on open shapes. It sits one level below the original version, which is why a few titles turn up again in the next section.

Level 2: one new move

Level 2 keeps everything Level 1 asked for and adds one thing. Usually it is the eighth note, so the right hand moves twice as often, and sometimes it is a first barre chord or a change that lands sooner than you expect. One new move at a time, never three.

These 25 beginner guitar songs are where most people spend their first real stretch of progress, and several of them are the versions with barre chords of titles you just read above.

Song	Artist	Chords
Another Day in Paradise	Phil Collins	4 (Am, Em, F, G)
Bad Moon Rising	Creedence Clearwater Revival	3 (D, A, G)
Breathe	Pink Floyd	6
Fortunate Son	Creedence Clearwater Revival	4 (G, F, C, D)
Free Fallin	Tom Petty	3 (D, Gadd9, Asus4)
Have You Ever Seen the Rain ?	Creedence Clearwater Revival	6
Heart of Gold	Neil Young	4 (Em, D, C, G)
Hey Joe	Jimi Hendrix	5
If it Makes You Happy	Sheryl Crow	6
Is There Anybody out There	Pink Floyd	8
Kiss	Prince	4 (A7, D7, E7, E9)
Losing My Religion	R.E.M.	6
New Year's Day	U2	5
One	U2	5
Patience	Guns N' Roses	7
Runaway Train	Soul Asylum	6
Scar Tissue	Red Hot Chili Peppers	3 (F, Dm, C)
Stand By Me	Ben E. King	7
Talkin' Bout a Revolution	Tracy Chapman	4 (G, Cadd9, Em, D)
The Scientist	Coldplay	6
What's Up?	4 Non Blondes	6
Where Did You Sleep Last Night	Nirvana	4 (E, A, G, B)
Wicked Game	Chris Isaak	3 (Am, G, D)
Wonderful Tonight	Eric Clapton	5
Yellow	Coldplay	6

The Chords column counts the shapes the lesson for that song actually works through, and names them when there are four or fewer. A blank cell means the grid is not written here rather than guessed at: the no barre arrangements have their own shapes, which differ from the original, and a few songs have not been broken down yet.

Songs with 2, 3 and 4 chords

Counting chords is the roughest measure of difficulty there is, and it is still the first question almost everyone asks. So here are the same songs again, taken from the two tables above and sorted by how many shapes they need. Nothing in these lists is above Level 2.

Two chords are enough for a real song, and the usual example is A Horse With No Name by America: the verses run on Em and D6, one change, over and over. It sits in the four chord list below rather than a two chord one, because the lesson for it works through four shapes in all, the two extra ones belonging to the rest of the song rather than to the verse. That gap between what a verse needs and what a whole song needs is worth noticing, and it is why nothing in our catalog has a two chord entry today.

3 chords

Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam, Nirvana: E, D, A
Simple Man, Lynyrd Skynyrd: C, G, Am
Stir It Up, Bob Marley: A, D, E
Three Little Birds, Bob Marley: A, D, E
Used to Love Her, Guns N' Roses: D, A, G
You Can't Always Get What You Want, The Rolling Stones: C, F, D
Bad Moon Rising, Creedence Clearwater Revival: D, A, G
Free Fallin, Tom Petty: D, Gadd9, Asus4
Scar Tissue, Red Hot Chili Peppers: F, Dm, C
Wicked Game, Chris Isaak: Am, G, D

4 chords

"Heroes", David Bowie: D, G, C, Em
A Horse With No Name, America: Em, D6, F#, B
Cream, Prince: A, D, E, D/F#
Give Peace a Chance, John Lennon: C, A, G, D
Just My Imagination, The Cranberries: G, D, Am7, Em
Knocking on Heaven's Door, Bob Dylan: G, D, C, Am
Riders on the Storm, The Doors: Em, Am, C, D
With or Without You, U2: D, A, Bm, G
Zombie, The Cranberries: Em, C, G, D/F#
Another Day in Paradise, Phil Collins: Am, Em, F, G
Fortunate Son, Creedence Clearwater Revival: G, F, C, D
Heart of Gold, Neil Young: Em, D, C, G
Kiss, Prince: A7, D7, E7, E9
Talkin' Bout a Revolution, Tracy Chapman: G, Cadd9, Em, D
Where Did You Sleep Last Night, Nirvana: E, A, G, B

Above four shapes the count stops predicting anything. A song with nine chords and one strumming figure is easier than a song with three chords and a syncopated right hand, which is why the tables above lead with a level and keep the count as a second column. If you want the left hand side of all of this written out shape by shape, the basic guitar chords page has the open ones finger by finger, and the right hand side is in our eight guitar strumming patterns, ordered so that each adds exactly one thing to the one before.

How the 8 levels work

The scale runs from L1 to L8. L1 is a complete beginner, holding the first open chords and a single strumming figure. L2 adds the eighth note. L3 is where barre chords arrive, L4 where the beat divides into three, L5 where sixteenth notes do. L6, L7 and L8 carry the arrangements that take years: fingerstyle, mixed plectrum and fingers, and rhythms that sit across the beat rather than on it.

A level is set by the hardest thing a song actually asks of you, not by how many chords it has. That is why a two-chord song can land at L5 and a nine-chord song at L3. Each song in our catalog is placed by hand on this scale, and a song nobody has placed yet is left off this page rather than given a level it has not earned.

Tune up and set the tempo first

Two minutes before the first chord save an hour of frustration. Start with the online guitar tuner: it listens through your microphone and shows how far each string is off, which matters more than usual at this stage, because an out-of-tune guitar makes a correct chord sound wrong and sends you looking for a mistake in your fingers.

Then find the tempo. The tap tempo tells you the speed of the recording you are learning from, in beats per minute, so you can aim below it on purpose instead of chasing it and missing. Work a difficult bar ten or twenty BPM under the real tempo until it is clean, then climb back.

Both tools run in the browser, with no account and no download, alongside the rest of our free guitar tools.

Frequently asked questions

What makes a guitar song easy?

Four things, and the chords are only one of them. A song is easy when its shapes are open chords rather than barre chords, when the changes come slowly enough that your hand has time to arrive, when the strumming repeats the same figure instead of changing every bar, and when the whole thing is short enough to hold in your head. A song with two chords and a fast, syncopated right hand is harder than a song with five chords and a steady one.

Should I learn on an acoustic or an electric guitar?

Whichever one you will actually pick up. An electric is physically easier, because the strings are lighter and sit closer to the fretboard, and it can be played quietly through headphones. An acoustic needs no cable and no amplifier, so it tends to stay within reach. Neither choice changes the songs on this page: every title here works on both.

Do I need a capo?

Not for these songs. A capo is useful later, when you want to play along with a recording whose key does not suit your voice, or when a song was written with one. It is a cheap and genuinely handy thing to own, but nothing on this page requires it.

Can I avoid barre chords at first?

Yes, and the tables above say which ones. Where a song has an arrangement that replaces its barre chords with open ones, that arrangement is listed as its own entry, with No barre chords in the Arrangement column. It usually sits one level below the original version, which is why a few titles appear in both sections: the version without barre chords at Level 1, the version with them at Level 2.

How long does it take to play a first song?

Less than most people fear, and more than one sitting. With ten to fifteen minutes on most days, the first open chords ring within a few weeks and a song at Level 1 comes together in two to three months, slowly at first. The shape of it is always the same: the chord shapes come first, the changes between them next, the strumming last. How long it takes to learn guitar sets out the four milestones after that one, as ranges rather than dates, and says what moves you to either end of each range.

How many chords does a beginner song need?

Two is enough to start a real one. A Horse With No Name by America holds its verses on Em and D6, which is a single change repeated. With three or four open shapes a great deal of pop, folk and rock opens up, and the Chords column in the tables above says which shapes each song needs. After that the count stops mattering: what decides the difficulty is the strumming hand, the tempo, and how fast the changes arrive.

Where are the video lessons for these songs?

In French, for now. Every song on this page has a step-by-step video lesson, and those lessons have not been made in English yet. That is exactly what the form at the bottom of this page is for: leave your email and you will hear from us when they exist, and not before.

Who made this

Guitar Social Club is the work of Yohann Abbou, a guitar teacher in Paris. He teaches adults, which shapes everything here: people with jobs, limited practice time and a clear idea of the songs they want to play. The eight levels come out of his lessons, which is why this page gives a song a number rather than an adjective. The rest of our free guitar tools work the same way. There is more on who he is and why this site exists in about Guitar Social Club.

Easy guitar songs for beginners, ranked by real difficulty