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Songs of my Life: The Axis of Awesome – 4 Chord Song

Florian Buechting Songs Of My Life No Comments

I really feel sorry that I don’t make it more regularly to release a new Songs of my Life posting. I generally love that category – but it is also too easy to push a posting of it into the next week and the week thereafter and… you know how the story is going on. This time, however, I am – strictly speaking – not only introducing you to one song, which accompanied me during my life, but also a set of them. The song is called the 4 Chord Song. Either you already know it and enjoy the posting just due to that – or you get fascinated by this combination of comedy and fascinating musical skills by an Australian band.

 

4 Chord Song – The Story of The Song

The 4 Chord Song has been reported by the The Axis of Awesome. They have been a comedy rock trio founded and based in Sydney. Jordan Raskopolous (lead vocalist), Lee Naimo (guitar, vocals) and Benny Davis (keyboard, vocals) founded the band in 2006. The name is a reaction on the phrase Axis of Evil used by George W. Bush at that time. The album version of the song, which has originally been named Four Chords, has been released as the 16th track of their third album, Animal Vehicle, which has been released in 2011.

The album has not been too much of a success – and the single initially hasn’t been either. The only chart placement Wikipedia is showing is a 175th spot in the United Kingdom. Nonetheless, the song is a viral hit, especially on Youtube, where the on-stage recording has gathered some 79 million streams and the music video 46 million additionally. So, what’s the magic behind it?

The magic is that in fact the studio version of the song consists of 47 underlying songs and is rather a medley. Raskopolous states at the beginning that The Axis of Awesome hasn’t been successful as they never wrote a song which consisted of these four chords. Then the medley starts with Journey’s Don’t stop believing. but later features songs like Forever Young by Alphaville, Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver, 2 Become 1 by the Spice Girls, Africa by Toto or even Barbie Girl by Aqua. They all reference to the chords D-A-Bm-G.

Even though the Australians had to transpose the majority of songs, this is rather genius. Unfortunately, while the trio has been really popular in Australia, this has been their only success. After the split in 2018, the only band member who stayed rather popular is band lead Raskopolous, who is nowadays named Jordan Nicola Bridget Raskopolous and is a rather well-known actress, comedian and singer.

 

4 Chord Song – My Story of The Song

I have to say that it is rather My Story of the Songs presented than only the song itself which fascinate me. I ran into the song rather late – likely like many other listeners – on social media. The way to combine songs in that way (the live version feels rather more genius to me) is absolutely fascinating and underlines great skills. On the other hand, this medley contains so many songs, which accompanied me during my life. I already told you my story of Don’t stop believin’ and my love to the Rock of Ages musical. But even songs like Barbie Girl or If I were a boy (orig. by Beyonce) are songs, which somehow have been a part of my music live, even if they not been on the top of my personal playlists. The way to put these songs together and to merge them into this amazing composition truly fascinates me. Bad luck I have no chance to see these guys on stage any more,

 

4 Chord Song – Spotify and Lyrics

Here is the song (album version) on Spotify:

You can find the lyrics, for example, on the Genius page. The Axis of Awesome Wikipedia page also features a list of all songs quoted.

 

Songs Of My Life Playlist

I created a playlist with all the Songs Of My Life songs so far. It will be updated with very new episode:

 

Australian Music

Here are all my Music & Media postings related to Australia:

 

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