Taylor Swift
Love Story chords
Love Story by Taylor Swift is a beginner song in D, played with a capo on fret 2. The whole sheet is 4 chords (D, A, Bm, G) across 5 sections: Intro → Verse ×2 → Pre-chorus → Chorus → Bridge. 3 of the 4 shapes are open chords. Shapes that use a barre: Bm. It sits at roughly 119 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: A → Bm, 5 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerbarre shape Bm
- Key
- Dwith a capo on fret 2
- Tempo
- 119BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 43 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 5each with its own progression
Chords in Love Story
Frets read low E to high E, x means leave that string out.
Chord sheet
One chord per bar in this practice sheet. Follow the time signature shown beside each section; dots mark the remaining counts in the bar. Tap a bar to hear its chord, or loop the section to practise the changes.
Chord accompaniment only. Follow the section notes for this arrangement’s timing. Songs whose words are public domain →
Intro4/4 · ♩=119
Verse× 2 · 4/4 · ♩=119
Pre-chorus4/4 · ♩=119
Chorus4/4 · ♩=119
Bridge4/4 · ♩=119
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Love Story
The main shapes in this arrangement are D, A, Bm and G. D to A changes the B string from fret 3 to fret 2, so the fret-3 finger cannot stay planted. Practise A to Bm separately: both use the A string as their root string, but Bm needs a fret-2 barre and a minor third on the B string at fret 3.
Capo on fret 2 keeps you in the recorded key of D while those shapes stay open. The pre-chorus is the only real change of colour: it climbs A, Bm, D before landing back on A, which is what makes the chorus feel like a release. Play the verse quietly with a single downward strum per chord and open up in the chorus.
Practise at 100 BPM first and isolate the D-to-A and A-to-Bm pairs for a minute each, since those two transitions carry the whole song. When Bm stops buzzing, run the verse loop eight times in a row without stopping and without looking at your hand. Then add the pre-chorus and chorus, and only raise the tempo once every change lands dead on the beat. If the barre still fights you, play Bm on the top four strings until your index finger builds the callus it needs.
How to practise Love Story
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 speed marked here.
Learn the shapes easiest first
D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → A (x-0-2-2-2-0, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → Bm (x-2-4-4-3-2, intermediate, needs a barre)
3 of the 4 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave Bm until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
D → A7×A → Bm5×Bm → G5×G → D3×
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
- Devery section
- Aevery section
- Bmevery section
- GIntro, Verse, Chorus, Bridge
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 71 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 71 → 89 → 107 → 119 BPM. The tempo marked on this sheet is 119 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 107 for longer than feels necessary.
Practise each section's chord changes slowly, then play the sheet through at a steady tempo without pausing between sections.
Playing Love Story with a capo
This sheet is written with a capo on fret 2. 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
E B C#m A
2 of 4 stay open
Fret 1
Eb Bb Cm Ab
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2as written
D A Bm G
3 of 4 stay open
Fret 3
C# Ab Bbm F#
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 4
C G Am F
3 of 4 stay open
Fret 5
B F# Abm E
1 of 4 stay open
Fret 6
Bb F Gm Eb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
A E F#m D
3 of 4 stay open
Working out a different key? The capo calculatordoes the same arithmetic for any chord set.
More songs built on the same chords
If Love Story clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More beginner songs to learn after this one: Sweater Weather, Payphone, The Scientist, 505.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Love Story turns up across all 104 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
323bars of this chord across the songbook
58songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 52×.
134bars of this chord across the songbook
24songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 19×.
84bars of this chord across the songbook
17songs use this shape
Most often followed by A, 13×.
509bars of this chord across the songbook
77songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 89×.