The Beatles · from Let It Be (tracked Jan 1970) · written by George Harrison
A study in a waltz-time minor lament with a line-cliché bass and a blues-chorus flip to parallel major.
Harrison's A-minor waltz walks its bass down a chromatic ladder under a held tonic, then flips into a bright A-major blues chorus before slipping back into the shadow.
This is George's slow, sad waltz on Let It Be, in a home key of A minor.
Under the same held chord, the bass note slides down step by step, a trick called a line cliche, and it gives the whole song its dripping-down feel.
Then the chorus jumps into the bright, matching happy key called A major, playing a classic 12-bar blues shuffle.
Flipping from sad to happy on the same home note like that is called a parallel-key flip.
Then the song slides right back into the sad waltz, no fuss.
To see the exact chords and key, open Pollack or Isophonics.
The verse lives in A minor and the chorus in A major, so the tonal center never moves but the mode does.
That parallel-key relationship, one home note colored two ways, is the emotional pivot of the whole song.
The pre-chorus and outro walk their bass down a full chromatic ladder, Am to Am/G# to Am/G to D/F# to Fmaj7, so the harmony above barely changes while the bass steps down by half step.
This descending line cliché is one of the most emotionally loaded moves in pop songwriting (think “My Funny Valentine”) and it is the harmonic engine of the verse.
The pre-chorus reaches E7♭9, a dominant seventh with a flatted ninth, the classic harmonic-minor dominant color.
That single ♭9 alteration gives the chord its Spanish-Andalusian bite and drives the pull back to A minor with unusual force.
The chorus flips to A major and plays a shortened 12-bar blues on A7, D7, and E7, all the dominant-seventh colors of a classic shuffle.
This blues brightness against the minor verse is the parallel-key flip in action, giving the song a moment of defiant swing before the shadow returns.
The form alternates the 3/4 minor waltz with the duple-time major chorus, using meter itself as a formal signal along with the mode change.
Each return to the waltz gains weight because the chorus has just shown what the same tonic can feel like in the light.
| Section | Degree | Chord | Nashville |
|---|---|---|---|
| Verse (Am) | 1 | Am | 1m |
| Verse | b3 | C | b3 |
| Verse | 4 | D (D/F#) | 4 |
| Verse | b6 | F (Fmaj7) | b6(maj7) |
| Verse | 5(7♭9) | E7♭9 | 5(7♭9) |
| Chorus (A) | 1(7) | A7 | 1(7) |
| Chorus | 4(7) | D7 | 4(7) |
| Chorus | 5(7) | E7 | 5(7) |
Chords sourced from a public transcription. Verse and pre-chorus in A minor; chorus flips to A major.
Reading the numbers: in the verse and pre-chorus, degrees are relative to A minor; in the chorus, relative to A major. Plain = major, m = minor, (7) = a dominant-seventh coloring, (7♭9) = a flat-9 alteration for harmonic-minor bite, slash chords show a bass tone under the chord. Here Am, Am/G#, Am/G, D/F#, Fmaj7 spells the chromatic descending bass A, G#, G, F#, F.
Most chords (Am, Dm, D, G, C, F, A, E) are plain open or barre triads. The seventh chords in each section are shown below (low E to high e; x = mute).
Prose analysis of the minor waltz, the line cliché, and the parallel-key blues chorus.
Open Pollack mirror →Downloadable chord and key files: the exact chords and where the key flips.
Open Isophonics →Roman-numeral function and melody for the verse and chorus, if a community tab exists.
Open the Beatles index →