Christina Perri
A Thousand Years chords
A Thousand Years by Christina Perri is a beginner song in Bb, played with a capo on fret 3. The whole sheet is 5 chords (G, D, Em, C, Am) across 3 sections: Intro → Verse → Chorus. Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength. It sits at roughly 139 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: G → D, 5 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerno barre needed
- Key
- Bbwith a capo on fret 3
- Tempo
- 139BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 5all open shapes
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in A Thousand Years
Frets read low E to high E, x means leave that string out.
Chord sheet
One chord per bar, four beats to the bar: the shape lands on beat one and the dots mark the beats after it, so you can see where the change falls without any lyrics. Where a section has no strumming pattern written, play one chord per bar. Tap a bar to hear it.
Lyrics are not reproduced for this song: they are still in copyright and this site has no licence to publish them. The chords, structure, strumming and sing-along timing are all here. Songs whose words are public domain →
Intro♩=139
Verse♩=139
Chorus♩=139
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play A Thousand Years
A Thousand Years is a slow four-chord loop with a capo on fret 3, which keeps the shapes in G, D, Em and C while the song sounds in Bb. Learn those four in that order and you already have the intro and the chorus. Play each chord as a gentle arpeggio, one note at a time, and let all six strings ring until you actually need to move.
The transition that decides whether this sounds good is G to D. Leave your ring finger on the B string at fret 3 and your middle finger on the G string at fret 2: only the index finger moves, and the two ringing notes carry across the change. Do that and the loop sounds continuous instead of chopped. Between D, Em and C, keep the strumming hand moving in a slow, even pulse.
The verse rearranges the same shapes — C, G, Em, D repeating, then C, G, Am, Em before it resolves back through D and G — so it feels like the chorus upside down. Play along at about 100 BPM, one chord per bar, and record yourself once a week; slowing this down exposes every late change. Speed is not the goal here: closing the silence between chords is what you are hunting for.
How to practise A Thousand Years
Four steps computed from this sheet: the order the shapes are easiest to learn in, the changes that really occur in the progressions above, where each chord turns up, and the tempo ladder up to the recorded speed.
Learn the shapes easiest first
G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner)
5 of the 5 shapes are open chords, so nothing here needs barre strength yet.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
G → D5×D → Em4×Em → C4×C → G3×
These counts come from the progressions on this page, so they are the changes you will actually play, not a generic list of pairs to practise.
Know where each chord turns up
- Gevery section
- Devery section
- Emevery section
- Cevery section
- AmVerse
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 83 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 83 → 104 → 125 → 139 BPM. The recorded feel is around 139 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 125 for longer than feels necessary.
Every section here uses the same set of shapes, so there is no section to single out. Whatever you can play once, you can play all the way through.
Playing A Thousand Years with a capo
This sheet is written with a capo on fret 3. Each card shows what you would finger at that capo position so the song still sounds exactly as written. Useful when the shapes above are awkward, or when you want to sing it higher without learning new chords.
No capo
Bb F Gm Eb Cm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 1
A E F#m D Bm
3 of 5 stay open
Fret 2
Ab Eb Fm C# Bbm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 3as written
G D Em C Am
5 of 5 stay open
Fret 4
F# C# Ebm B Abm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
F C Dm Bb Gm
2 of 5 stay open
Fret 6
E B C#m A F#m
2 of 5 stay open
Fret 7
Eb Bb Cm Ab Fm
no open shapes left, all barre
Working out a different key? The capo calculatordoes the same arithmetic for any chord set.
More songs built on the same chords
If A Thousand Years clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More beginner songs to learn after this one: Wonderwall, Let It Be, Creep, Hallelujah.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in A Thousand Years turns up across all 80 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
113bars of this chord across the songbook
30songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
116bars of this chord across the songbook
26songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 27×.