You Can’t Hurry Love | Chords + Lyrics
Intro
| N.C | N.C | N.C | N.C | Bb N.C | N.C |
Verse 1
| Bb | Bb | Eb Bb | Bb |
I need love, love, to ease my mind.
| Dm Gm7 | Gm7 | Eb F | F |
I need to find, find, someone to call mine, but mama said.
Chorus 1
| Bb | Bb | Eb Bb | Bb |
You can’t hurry love, no you just have to wait,
| Dm Gm7 | Gm Gm7 | Eb | F |
she said love don’t come easy, it’s a game of give and take.
| Bb | Bb | Eb Bb | Bb |
You can’t hurry love, no you just have to wait,
| Dm Gm | Gm | Eb | F |
you gotta trust, give it time, no matter how long it takes.
Bridge 1
| Dm | Dm | Dm | Dm |
But how many heartaches must I stand,
| Gm | Gm | Gm | Gm |
before I find a love to let me live again.
| Eb | Eb | Eb | Eb |
Right now the only thing, that keeps me hanging on,
| F | F F6 | F7 | F7 F |
when I feel my strength, yeah it’s almost gone, I remember mama said.
Chorus 2
| Bb | Bb | Eb Bb | Bb |
You can’t hurry love, no you just have to wait,
| Dm Gm7 | Gm Gm7 | Eb | F |
she said love don’t come easy, it’s a game of give and take.
| Bb | Bb | Eb Bb | Bb |
How long must I wait, how much more can I take,
| Dm Gm | Gm | Eb | F |
before loneliness, will ’cause my heart, heart to break?
Bridge 2
| Dm | Dm | Dm | Dm |
No, I can’t bear, to live my life alone,
| Gm7 | Gm7 Gm | Gm7 Gm | Gm |
I grow impatient for a love, to call my own.
| Eb | Eb | Eb | Eb E |
But when I feel that I, I can’t go on,
| F | F F6 | F7 | F7 F |
these precious words keeps me hanging on, I remember mama said.
Chorus 3
| Bb | Bb | Eb Bb | Bb |
(You can’t hurry love) no you just have to wait.
| Dm Gm7 | Gm Gm7 | Eb | F |
She said love don’t come easy, it’s a game of give and take.
| Bb | Bb | Eb Bb | Bb |
You can’t hurry love, no you just have to wait,
| Dm Gm | Gm | Eb | F |
she said: “Trust, give it time, no matter how long it takes” (Now wait).
Breakdown
| N.C | N.C |
Verse 2
| Bb | Bb | Eb Bb | Bb |
No love, love don’t come easy,
| Dm Gm7 | Gm7 | Eb F | F |
but I keep on waiting, anticipating for that,
| Bb | Bb | Eb Bb | Bb |
soft voice, to talk to me at night.
| Dm Gm7 | Gm7 | Eb F | F |
For some tender arms to hold me tight,
| Bb | Bb | Eb Bb | Bb |
I keep waiting, I keep on waiting,
| Dm Gm | Gm | Eb F | F |
but it ain’t easy, it ain’t easy, when mama said.
Chorus 4
| Bb | Bb | Eb Bb | Bb |
You can’t hurry love, no you just have to wait,
| Dm Dsus4 Gm | Gm | Eb F | F |
she said: “Trust, give it time, no matter how long it takes”.
| Bb | Bb | Eb Bb | Bb |
You can’t hurry love, no you just have to wait,
| Dm Gm | Gm | Eb F | F | to fade
She said love don’t come easy.
You Can’t Hurry Love Guitar Lesson | Course Preview
You Can’t Hurry Love is a single by The Supremes. Released in 1966 it would become one of the band’s biggest hits, perfectly representing the 60s Motown sound.
Written by Holland-Dozier-Holland, it is a true jewel in the crown of Berry Gordy’s musical empire.
When it comes to playing it on the guitar, the best thing You Can’t Hurry Love teaches us is how to maintain a repetitive rhythm as the chords change.
By playing the same rhythm for every chord, you create a meditative part that is really easy for the listener to absorb. By changing the chord shapes, you provide subtle variation.
When you can play the song in an improvised way, meaning, you change the chord shapes as you go along, still maintaining the set rhythm, you are on the right track.
To achieve this, you must practice the chord progression for each section in every area of the neck. Below you find the first lesson from the course where we do this for the chorus.
You Can’t Hurry Love’s chords, progressions, and TAB
Let’s start with working on that chorus progression. I want you to be able to play this anywhere on the neck as this will make it more enjoyable to play the song. You could in this way keep changing it every time you play it.
The fact that you’ll map out the fretboard with Bb, Eb, Dm, Gm, and F chords is a bonus not to be underestimated!
These are You Can’t Hurry Love’s chorus chords.
||: Bb | Bb | Eb Bb | Bb |
| Dm Gm | Gm | Eb | F :||
Let’s start by playing all these chords as far down the neck as we can. Each chords shape is:
In TAB, it looks like this.
When you can play this, move up the neck and play it like example 2 shown below.
Now the chords are a G-shape for the Bb, a C-shape for the Eb, a Cm-shape for the Dm, an Em-shape for the Gm, and a D-shape for the F.
Play it until you don’t make any mistakes. Just like when you played Rescue Me and all other songs that use barre chords, you must do all your muting with the fretting hand.
Here’s the next and perhaps the best way to play this chorus, the Bb gets an E-shape, the Eb an A-shape, etc.
Keep this going until you can play it without making mistakes.
Example 4 is more of an exercise than a great part to be perfectly honest with you.
When you can play this really well, you’ll end up picking a few of these shapes for one area of the song.
Here’s the last example. I like the progression up here, the C-shaped Bb and the E-shaped Eb sound great.
I would consider playing like this towards the end of the song in order to create a climax.
You Can’t Hurry Love’s 8 guitar lessons in the course
Learn how to play You Can’t Hurry Love, step by step by practicing each section of the song with the band.
As well as this we also practice all our dom7 CAGED shapes.
In total, there are 8 step-by-step lessons for You Can’t Hurry Love available. Here are links to each lesson in the course (members only):
- Step 1 – Bars & Beats
- Step 2 – Chorus
- Step 3 – Verse
- Step 4 – CAGED dom7 chords
- Step 5 – Bridge
- Step 6 – Chorus, verse & bridge
- Step 7 – The complete song with TAB
- Step 8 – Live band backing track
Become a member today and get unlimited access to all my guitar courses, the SEPR practice route, and the eBook Spytunes Method – You can learn guitar!
You Can’t Hurry Love chords | Related pages
Intermediate Electric
The intermediate electric tunes will help you with learning the CAGED system all over the fretboard, both for chords and pentatonic scales.
Learn these Motown/Soul classics, and you’ll not just improve dramatically but also gain yourself a repertoire.
Five similar tunes
The Supremes
The Supremes are the most successful American vocal group of all time, at their peak, they were as big as The Beatles.
Led by Diana Ross, they had #1’s with Where Did Our Love Go, Baby Love, Stop! In the Name of Love, You Can’t Hurry Love, and You Keep Me Hangin’ On.
The Supremes 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.
