Footloose | Chords + Lyrics
Intro
||: drums :|| x4
||: bass :|| x4
||: A (riff) | A7 (riff) :|| x8
||: A7 (riff) :|| x6
Verse 1
| A N.C | N.C D/F# | A N.C | N.C D/F# |
Been working so hard, I’m punching my card.
| A N.C | N.C D/F# | A N.C | A (C) |
Eight hours, for what? Oh, tell me what I got.
Bridge 1
| D5 | D5 | D5 | D5 | A5 A6 | A7 A6 A5 | A (lick) | A (lick) |
I gotten this feeling, that time’s just holding me down.
| D5 | D5 | B7/D# | B7/D# | E | F#m11 | G6 | G#5 N.C |
I’ll hit the ceiling, or else I’ll tear up this town.
Chorus 1
||: A5 A7 A6 | A5 A7 A6 | D5 (D6) | A5 A7 A6 :||
Tonight I gotta cut loose, footloose. Kick off your Sunday shoes.
Please, Louise, pull me up off my knees.
Jack, get back, c’mon, before we crack.
| A5 A7 A6 | A5 A7 A6 | D5 G5 |
Lose your blues, everybody cut footloose.
Instrumental 1
||: A (riff) :|| x3
| A riff (D/F#) |
Verse 2
You’re playing so cool, obeying every rule.
Dig way down in your heart, you’re burning, yearning for some.
Bridge 2
| D5 | D5 | D5 | D5 | A5 A6 | A7 A6 A5 |
Somebody to tell you, that life ain’t passing you by.
| D5 | D5 | B7/D# | B7/D# | E | F#m11 | G6 | G#5 N.C |
I’m trying to tell you, it will if you don’t even try.
Chorus 2
You can fly if you’d only cut loose, footloose. Kick off your Sunday shoes.
Ooh-wee, Marie, shake it, shake it for me.
Whoa, Milo, c’mon, c’mon let’s go.
Lose your blues, everybody cut footloose.
Breakdown
||: N.C | N.C :||
(Oh-oh-oh-oh) cut footloose (oh-oh-oh-oh)
| N.C | N.C | N.C | N.C (G) |
Cut footloose (oh-oh-oh-oh) cut footloose (aah)
| A5 N.C | N.C (G) |
(First) we got to turn you around.
| A5 N.C | N.C (G) |
(Second) you put your feet on the ground.
| A5 N.C | N.C |
(Third) now take a hold of your soul.
||: E :|| x7
(Aah)
| A5 N.C | A5 N.C D5 |
I’m turning it loose.
Outro
||: A5 A7 A6 | A5 A7 A6 | D5 (D6) | A5 A7 A6 :|| x7
Footloose, kick off your Sunday shoes
Please, Louise, pull me up off my knees
Jack, get back, c’mon, before we crack
Lose your blues, everybody cut footloose
Footloose (footloose), footloose, kick off your Sunday shoes.
Please, Louise, pull me up off my knees.
Jack, get back, c’mon, before we crack.
| A5 A7 A6 | A5 | N.C | N.C G D/F# |
Lose your blues, everybody cut, everybody cut.
| N.C | N.C G D/F# |
Everybody cut, everybody cut.
| N.C | G N.C | N.C | A (riff) | A (riff) |
Everybody cut, everybody cut (everybody) everybody cut footloose.
Footloose Chords: Learn the progressions
Looking at the chords above, Footloose seems pretty simple, but it’s not. This is not a soul tune you can jam out, add some licks, and play differently every time.
You need a set part played with complete confidence which is not easy as the original recording has several guitars.
As the only guitarist in the band, you need to carefully work out what the most important parts are, and then combine them into one part that works for a live band with you being the only guitarist.
It may only be mainly A and D chords but these need to be played as perfectly crafted chord riffs, impossible to explain without TAB.
Luckily for you, I’ve put the hours in and done this for you. All you have to do is practice the parts, here’s a link to that part of the lesson: Footloose – Guitar Lesson with TAB.
When you’ve memorized the parts, ironically, it will actually be easy! This is the great contradiction of rock guitar.
Looking at Footloose chords and trying to make some sense of this, we have to understand that it’s flirting with the blues, where we are using two notes which seemingly shouldn’t go together.
In Blues, this is the minor and major 3rd, in Footloose, it’s the maj7 and b7. Let’s look at how.
During the verse, we play an A and a D/F#, these are diatonic chords, giving us a country flavour, like this:
||: A (I) N.C | N.C D/F# (IV/3) |
For the bridge, we play (a bVIIx/backdoor dominant), a G chord, giving us a blues flavour, like this:
| D5 (IV) | D5 | D5 | D5 | A5 (I) A6 | A7 A6 A5 | A (lick) | A (lick) |
| D5 (IV) | D5 | B7/D# (IIx/3) | B7/D# | E (V) | F#m11 (VI) | G6 (bVIIx) | G#5 (VII) N.C |
The chorus is Rock ‘N” Roll/ Country honky-tonk, like this:
||: A5 (I) A7 A6 | A5 A7 A6 | D5 (IV) (D6) | A5 A7 A6 :||
| A5 A7 A6 | A5 A7 A6 | D5 G5 (bVIIx) |
Again, you need the TAB to understand all these extensions. Once you’ve got it down, this 2-page chord chart will help you with the structure which I simply couldn’t fit onto one page.
Footloose Chord Chart | PDF + iReal Pro
Should you want to download this chart, here’s a PDF: Footloose Chord Chart PDF page 1 and Footloose Chord Chart PDF page 2.
This chord chart was created using iReal Pro, here’s a link to that file: Footloose iReal Pro page 1 and Footloose iReal Pro page 2. Using this and the iRealPro app, you can change the key although I would advise against that!
Was Footloose the best musical movie of the ’80s?
Footloose, released in 1984 as a single from the movie of the same name, became Kenny Loggins‘ signature song.
The movie is about a town that forbid dancing as it was corrupting the youth. A star-studded cast consisting of Kevin Bacon, Lori Singer, Sarah Jessica Parker, John Lithgow, and Dianne Wiest made this one of the best music films of the ’80s.
According to movieweb.com, it’s even better than Flashdance, Blues Brothers, Little Shop of Horrors, Fame, Dirty Dancing, and Purple Rain!
Kenny stuck with the soundtrack formula and later wrote Danger Zone for Top Gun (1986).
A fun fact about the tune Footloose is that one of the guitarists was Buzz Feiten, a man who later would go on to patent a tuning system for the guitar.
Speaking of tuning, you’ll want to be slightly sharp when playing along with the original recording. Use my online guitar tuner, and set it to 448Hz to get on the same frequency as Kenny and Buzz!
Footloose Chords | Related Pages
Footloose | Guitar Lesson + TAB
With this guitar lesson, you can learn how to play Footloose by Kenny Loggins using TAB and chord analysis.
| A N.C | N.C D/F# | A N.C | N.C D/F# |
Been working so hard, I’m punching my card…
Five similar tunes | Chords + Lyrics
Kenny Loggins tunes
Following a successful folk duo in the ’70s, Kenny Loggins started writing soundtracks with great success in the ’80s.
His best tunes include Danny’s Song, Your Mama Don’t Dance, This Is It, Footloose, and Danger Zone.
Kenny Loggins on the web
About me | Dan Lundholm
This was a guitar lesson about Footloose chords, by Dan Lundholm. Discover more about him and how you can learn guitar with Spytunes.
Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not by practising scales or studying theory in isolation.
