Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles

Overview

Key: E minor · Chords used: 7 · Sections: 8

Form: Intro → Verse → Chorus → Verse → Chorus → Bridge → Verse → Chorus

Where these chords come from: an expert transcription of the original recording made for the Isophonics reference annotations (Centre for Digital Music, Queen Mary University of London). This page shows that transcription as-is: the analysis below is generated directly from it by code, not written by AI. Consecutive repeats of a chord are shown once, and the piano voicings are our playable arrangement of each chord symbol, not a note-for-note transcription.

Section by section

Intro

• C – Em (×2)
  bVI – i

Verse 1

• Em – C – Em – Em/D – C – Em
  i – bVI – i – i (bass D) – bVI – i

Chorus 1

• Em7 – Em6 – C/E – Em (×2)
  i7 – i6 – bVI⁶ – i

Verse 2

• Em – C (×2)
  i – bVI
• Em
  i

Chorus 2

Same chords as Chorus 1.

Bridge

• C – Em (×2)
  bVI – i

Verse 3

Same chords as Verse 2.

Chorus 3

• Em7 – Em6 – C/E – Em (×2)
  i7 – i6 – bVI⁶ – i
• F♯m7 – Em
  ii7 – i

Chord vocabulary

Harmonic highlights

• F♯m7 (ii7) is borrowed from the parallel key, E major.

Sources & accuracy

• Chords and sections: the Isophonics reference annotations (Centre for Digital Music, Queen Mary University of London). Expert chord and structure annotation of the original recording (CC BY 4.0 via ChoCo).
• Not verified: another expert transcription (the Rock Corpus RS 200 (de Clercq & Temperley, 2011), analysis by Trevor de Clercq) differs in places from this one, so this page isn't marked verified.
• Rhythm and chord durations aren't shown; each step is one chord change.