A Hard Day's Night

This song is very popular among guitarists because it consists of relatively simple chords and sounds great. We ukulele players should not be left out of the fun. The chords we need are Cadd2 (a special form of C major that also contains a D note), G, F, B minor, E minor and D.

It is worth noting that there is a version of the C9 chord in which the A string is fretted at the first fret rather than the third, but that voicing does not sound good in this song.

The verses are based on a relatively simple chord progression. The twist comes in the bridge, where we wander into one or two minor chords. Let us see how:

Here are the lyrics with chords:

The Beatles — A Hard Day's Night

It's been a [G]hard [C9]day's [G]night and I've been [F]working like a [G]dog
It's been a hard [C9]day's [G]night I should be [F]sleeping like a [G]log
But when I [C]get home to you I find the [D]things that you do will
make me [G]feel [C9]al[G]right

You know I [G]work [C9]all [G]day to get you [F]money to buy [G]things
And it's worth it just to [C9]hear you [G]say you're gonna [F]give me ev'ry[G]thing
So why I [C]love to come home 'Cause when I [D]get you alone
you know I'll [G]be [C9]O.[G]K.

When I'm [Hm]home [Em]ev'rything seems to be al[Hm]right
When I'm [G]home [Em]feeling you holding me [C]tight, [D]tight,yeah.

It's been a [G]hard [C9]day's [G]night...

The lyrics and chords simply repeat from here, so I have not written out the entire song. To learn it, it is very important to listen to the original recording many times. Try playing the chords along with it as you listen.

UPDATE: English/American notation uses “B” for the note called “H” in Hungarian/German notation. So, for example, what is written here as Hm is usually written Bm in English. (We will return to this in a later post.) I mention it here because the lyrics above originally used Bm, following English notation, but I changed it to the Hungarian Hm notation at the time so that it would not confuse Hungarian readers.