What is “the nostalgia chord”?
For anyone who hasn’t seriously studied it, music theory can seem like a daunting and confusing set of contradictory lessons and dense rules. For those who have studied it, music theory can still appear daunting and confusing. With basic guidelines that often get subverted and different approaches from different cultures‘ educational teachings, music theory has no single unifying principle. Instead, it helps to view different techniques through the lens of other means of translation, whether it’s mathematical or emotional.
For instance, the feeling of wistful nostalgia or hopeful determination can often be associated with specific chord progressions. In a standard major chord sequence, the three chord is minor (iii) thanks to the notes that make up the chord. That means that if you’re playing a song in the key of A Major, the three chord will be a C# minor due to the three notes that make up the chord – C#, E, and G#.
But since the standard rules of music theory are made to be broken, a number of composers and musicians have decided to subvert this expected chord. In popular music, the use of a major three chord (III) in an otherwise standard major chord progression (or Ionion mode) can often conjure up feelings of nostalgia or purposeful uncertainty.
Perhaps the most famous use of this progression comes in Radiohead’s ‘Creep’, which jumps from its tonic chord of G straight to the major third of B throughout its verses and choruses. When Radiohead was sued by the publishers for The Hollies thanks to the similarities between ‘Creep’ and ‘The Air That I Breathe’, it was the similar chord progressions that were cited as the most damning evidence.
But the jump from the tonic to the major third had been a staple of popular music since before either Radiohead or The Hollies wrote their respective songs. The Beatles used it (in a roundabout way) on ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, while David Bowie used it more directly on ‘Space Oddity’. Oasis has a major three in ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, as does Sublime in their song ‘Santeria’.
When it comes down to the major three, there are a couple of different explanations as to what it is doing specifically in the song. Often, a major three is seen as a secondary dominant chord, which is to say that it is acting as a resolving chord for something other than the tonic chord. In a standard major chord progression, the relative minor key would be found in the sixth chord since it shares the same tones. For example, in G Major, the relative minor is E Minor. A secondary dominant chord comes in when resolving that relative minor – the dominant chord in E Minor is a B Major. Thus, if you use the rules of a relative minor key while staying in the original major key, that major three chord becomes a secondary dominant chord.
That’s not always the case, however. When a composition doesn’t lean heavily enough on the relative minor key and its rules, like when the chord progression mixes up the relationship that the major three chord has with the tonic chord or the tonic of the relative minor, the major three chord can represent different theories in the concept of multipolar tonality. To make it as simple as possible, the major three chord is there to disrupt the “normal” flow of tones that a listener might expect from a standard major chord progression. It just so happens that the major three is usually associated with nostalgia, hence its reputation as “the nostalgia chord”.
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