Intermediate Acoustic, Motown & Soul, Song Book

Lovely Day chords by Bill Withers

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Lovely Day | Chords + Lyrics

Intro

Verse 1

Bridge 1

| C/D | D/E | Am7 | Bm7 |
Then I look at you, and the world’s alright with me.
| C/D | D/E | Am7 | Bm7 |
Just one look at you, and I know it’s gonna be.

Chorus 1

Verse 2

Bridge 2

| C/D | D/E | Am7 | Bm7 |
Then I look at you, and the world’s alright with me.
| C/D | D/E | Am7 | Bm7 |
Just one look at you, and I know it’s gonna be.

Chorus 2

Verse 3

Bridge 3

| C/D | D/E | Am7 | Bm7 |
Then I look at you, and the world’s alright with me.
| C/D | D/E | Am7 | Bm7 |
Just one look at you, and I know it’s gonna be.

Chorus 3

Chorus 4

Lovely Day’s chords use modal interchange

Bill Withers‘ Lovely Day uses the chordal party trick of modal interchange, which makes it a fantastic piece to practice your modal improvisations as it’s pretty repetitive.

Lovely Day’s verse chords, E (I) – C#m7 (VI) – Amaj9 (IV) are from the key of E. We can say this is “in major”, or Ionian. Nothing strange going on there. It’s the last two chords where the magic happens.

In the last bar, we switch to the home being E Aeolian instead of Ionian as the chords are Cmaj7 (IV) – Bm7 (III).

This gives you two options when soloing:

E major (Ionian) for three bars, E minor (Aeolian) for one bar.
E Ionian – C# Aeolian – A Lydian – C Lydian – B Phrygian.

The biggest challenge when improvising over these chords is to not sound like you’re playing all those scales as fast as you can up and down.

The bridge is like a drawn-out version of what happened in that last bar as we now have emigrated to E Aeolian, or “E minor”. Although, and this is very important, we never play Em!

These are the chords for Lovely Day’s bridge:

C/D (IV) – D/E (V) – Am7 – (II) Bm7 (III).

In the playlist above, after Bill’s original version, there are a couple of piano tutorials on how to pay Lovely Day, watch these and you’ll learn even more!

Lovely Day chords | Related pages

Intermediate Acoustic

Most intermediate acoustic tunes can’t be played using just basic open-position chords. We have to move up the fretboard and play CAGED barre chords as well.

We incorporate bass lines, add licks, extend chords, and play vocal melodies. Most importantly, we’ll invent second guitar parts and play these songs together.

Five similar tunes with chords and lyrics

When you can play Lovely Day's chords, try these five tunes from the song book.

Bill Withers

Bill Withers was an American singer-songwriter who performed and recorded from the late 60s until the mid-80s.

Some of his best-known songs include Ain’t No Sunshine, Use Me, Lovely Day, Lean on Me, Grandma’s Hands, and Just The Two Of Us.

Bill Withers on the web

Motown & Soul

You can learn how to play these Motown & Soul tunes, and in doing so, gain yourself a repertoire so you can jam with, or even join a working band.

Study these tunes in-depth and you will map out the fretboard, master the CAGED system, and learn how to design a rhythm guitar part that works in a band.