Three Chords and the Truth/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: The concept of short songs, made quickly to cash in on a certain audience.

  • Straight: A Punk band releases an album with relatively simple songs, demonstrating their commitment to the genre.
  • Exaggerated: The songs made by the band are only made up of three repetitive notes, played without any change in the music whatsoever.
  • Justified: The band has no musical talent.
  • Inverted: See Epic Rocking.
  • Subverted: A guitar solo occurs halfway through...
  • Double Subverted: ...only for it to contain the exact same chords as the rest of the song.
  • Parodied: The band just plays one chord and shouts "PISS" into the microphone, then leaves. Everyone cheers and headbangs like it was an actual song.
  • Deconstructed: The band sparks a trend in which all bands play raw, simplistic rock, hindering the genre's authenticity.
  • Reconstructed: Once the genre is gone and replaced by bloated stadium rock, a new band revives the old simple sound.
  • Zig Zagged: An album made by the band features Genre Roulette, and several of these songs are included.
  • Averted: The songs are of a normal length.
  • Enforced: "Well, Punk is a very popular genre these days, can you play just three chord songs, just for us?"
  • Lampshaded: "If only we were more talented, our songs could be longer..."
  • Invoked: The band changes to this style in a desperate attempt to be more popular.
  • Exploited: The entire reason the band is popular is because of this trope, and when they try a New Sound Album, their audience hates them for it.
  • Defied: ???
  • Discussed: This is talked about in the Liner Notes.
  • Conversed: ???
  • Plotted A Good Waste: The band's entire reason for doing these songs is to demonstrate the average amount of musical talent a person has, and how they could be succesful for doing this... This Loser Is You indeed.

Back to Three Chords and the Truth.