10 Classic Rock Songs That Use 3 Chords Or Less

Not many people are coming to a Bruce Springsteen song and thinking they're going to get some grand prog rock production. Even though some of his songs in the early days were a bit on the long side, it was always about what he could do with the story he was telling in the lyrics. As he worked his way into the '80s though, the Boss had an axe to grind on Born in the USA.

Compared to almost anything else in the Boss' discography, this kind of backing track feels almost too bubblegum for him, with just 2 chords being played on a glossy '80s synthesizer. If you were listening just to the music, you would have thought that this was the kind of bright and sunshine-y song that the age of MTV was used to spitting out, right? Wrong.

As it turns out, Bruce may have had a bit more reasoning behind making this song pretty sparse with the music, since the lyrics are some of the most bleak he's ever written about the state of America. In between the bulletproof chorus, you hear tales about folks coming back from war and not being able to adjust and your average everyday people desperately trying to make ends meet in a country that's seemed to turn their back on them. For as many people chase the American dream, you need songs like these to tell you that it's a bit harder than it looks.