The Beatles · from Let It Be (Jan 1969) · traditional, arranged by the group
A study in the four-chord Liverpool folk fragment.
A 40-second snippet of a traditional Liverpool sea shanty, cycling G, C, D, and Am in G major, with the Am (2m) as a single non-tonic-chord passing color.
This is a very short traditional Liverpool folk song the Beatles played, in a home key of G major.
It uses only four chords: home (G), the two friendliest neighbors (C and D), and one sadder cousin (Am).
By the numbers those are 1, 4, 5, and 2m.
The song lasts less than a minute and is not by the Beatles at all; it is an old sailor song from Liverpool that they included as a tip of the hat to home.
Because the harmony is so simple, all the interest comes from the accent and the roll of the singing.
To see the exact chords and key, open Pollack or Isophonics.
The fragment stays in G major throughout with no modulation and no borrowed chord.
Its harmonic vocabulary is the smallest sensible palette for a folk song: the tonic, its two primary neighbors, and the relative minor.
The whole song uses G (1), C (4), D (5), and Am (2m).
Three of those are the primary triads of the key (1, 4, 5), and Am serves as a single non-tonic-chord passing color, giving the phrase a brief shadow before the return to home.
Each phrase ends on D moving to G, a clean authentic V to I cadence, the folk singer's most direct way to close a line.
There is no plagal touch, no seventh coloring, no substitution; the cadence is bare.
The whole album version is one verse of the traditional song, no chorus, no bridge, no repeat.
The form choice is not a design; it is what fits the 40-second window on the record.
Maggie Mae is a traditional Liverpool sea shanty about a prostitute jailed for theft, in the public domain long before the band recorded it.
The album credit is to Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starkey as arrangers of a traditional song, not as authors.
| Degree | Chord | Nashville | Roman |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | G | 1 | I |
| 2 | Am | 2m | ii |
| 3 | Bm | 3m | iii |
| 4 | C | 4 | IV |
| 5 | D | 5 | V |
| 6 | Em | 6m | vi |
| 7 | F#° | 7° | vii° |
Chords sourced from a public transcription, in G major.
Reading the numbers: each is a scale degree in G. Plain = major, m = minor. Here the loop is 1-4-1-5-1-4-2m-5-1 (G, C, G, D, G, C, Am, D, G).
All four chords (G, C, D, Am) are plain open triads. No diagram needed for this fragment.
Prose analysis of the G-major fragment and the folk chord palette.
Open Pollack mirror →Downloadable chord and key files (per-album zip that includes Maggie Mae).
Open Isophonics →Roman-numeral function and melody, if a community tab exists.
Open the song page →