Love Me or Leave Me by Walter Donaldson

Overview

Key: C major · Chords used: 10 · Sections: 4

Form: A Section → A Section → Bridge → A Section

Where these chords come from: a lead sheet of this public-domain song, contributed by a musician to the Wikifonia archive and preserved in the OpenEWLD lead-sheet collection (Simonetta et al., 2018). It describes the song as written, not any particular recording. This page shows that lead sheet 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

A Section 1

• Am7 – Bm7♭5 – E7 – Am7 – Bm7♭5 – G7 – Cmaj7 – Am6 – G7 – Cmaj7 – Bm7♭5 – E7
  vi7 – viiø7 – III7 – vi7 – viiø7 – V7 – Imaj7 – vi6 – V7 – Imaj7 – viiø7 – III7

A Section 2

• Am7 – Bm7♭5 – E7 – Am7 – Bm7♭5 – G7 – Cmaj7 – Am6 – G7 – Cmaj7
  vi7 – viiø7 – III7 – vi7 – viiø7 – V7 – Imaj7 – vi6 – V7 – Imaj7

Bridge

• A7 – Aaug7
  VI7 – VI+7
• A7 – Dm7 (×2)
  VI7 – ii7
• G7 – Cmaj7 – Bm7♭5 – E7
  V7 – Imaj7 – viiø7 – III7

A Section 3

• Am7 – Bm7♭5 – E7 – Am7 – Bm7♭5 – G7 – Cmaj7 – Am6 – G7 – Cmaj7
  vi7 – viiø7 – III7 – vi7 – viiø7 – V7 – Imaj7 – vi6 – V7 – Imaj7
• Bm7♭5 – E7 (×2)
  viiø7 – III7
• Fm6 – Cmaj7
  iv6 – Imaj7

Chord vocabulary

Harmonic highlights

• Fm6 (iv6) is borrowed from the parallel key, C minor.
• E7 acts as V/vi: it resolves to Am7.
• A7 acts as V/ii: it resolves to Dm7.

Sources & accuracy

• Chords: the OpenEWLD lead-sheet collection (Simonetta et al., 2018). Community-contributed lead sheet (chord symbols over the melody) from the Wikifonia archive, MIT licence. Title and songwriter credit as written on the sheet.
• Section names: detected by code from repeated 8-, 12- and 16-bar phrases (letters such as A and B mark different phrases; a phrase that comes back keeps its letter). Lead sheets rarely print section names.
• Not verified: only one lead sheet of this song is available, so it hasn't been cross-checked.
• Rhythm and chord durations aren't shown; each step is one chord change.