Eagles
Lyin' Eyes chords
Lyin' Eyes by Eagles is an intermediate song in G, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 9 chords (G, Gmaj7, C, Am, D, D7, Em, Bm, A7) across 3 sections: Intro → Verse → Chorus. 8 of the 9 shapes are open chords and Bm is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 133 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: Bm → Am, once.
- Difficulty
- Intermediatebarre shape Bm
- Key
- Gwith no capo
- Tempo
- 133BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 98 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in Lyin' Eyes
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♩=133
Verse♩=133
Chorus♩=133
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Lyin' Eyes
The whole song hangs on the two-chord seesaw in the first bar: G to Gmaj7 and back. Gmaj7 is just G with the note on the top E string moved from fret 3 down to fret 2, so keep the rest of the shape frozen and let one finger do the rocking. Get that movement smooth and the intro, the verse and the interlude all fall into place, because they all use the same four-bar cycle of G – Gmaj7 – C – Am with a D7 pulling back home.
The Am to D7 change is the other one worth isolating. Your ring finger on the G string at fret 2 and your index finger on the B string at fret 1 belong to both chords, so you can leave them planted and only add the D7’s high E string at fret 2. In the chorus the harmonic pace doubles: G, C, G, C moves quickly, then Em, Bm, Am, D descends. Play that chorus with the same relaxed right hand you use in the verse — the chords are moving twice as fast, not you.
Set the metronome to 100 and loop the verse four-bar cycle until the Gmaj7 rock is automatic and silent, with no gap between the two shapes. Then take the chorus on its own, two beats per chord, and slow it to the point where the Bm barre lands cleanly on every string. Only after both halves are comfortable should you push towards the record’s tempo, and when you do, keep the strum light: this song gets muddy fast when every chord is hit hard.
How to practise Lyin' Eyes
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) → Gmaj7 (3-x-0-0-0-2, beginner) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → D7 (x-x-0-2-1-2, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner) → A7 (x-0-2-0-2-0, beginner) → Bm (x-2-4-4-3-2, intermediate, needs a barre)
8 of the 9 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave Bm until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
C → Am3×G → C3×G → Gmaj73×Gmaj7 → C3×
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
- Gmaj7Intro, Verse
- Cevery section
- Amevery section
- DVerse, Chorus
- D7Intro, Verse
- EmChorus
- BmChorus
- A7Chorus
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 80 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 80 → 100 → 120 → 133 BPM. The recorded feel is around 133 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 120 for longer than feels necessary.
The section to leave until last is Chorus (16 bars in this sheet).
Playing Lyin' Eyes with a capo
This sheet needs no capo. 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 capoas written
G Gmaj7 C Am D D7 Em Bm A7
8 of 9 stay open
Fret 1
F# F#maj7 B Abm C# C#7 Ebm Bbm Ab7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
F Fmaj7 Bb Gm C C7 Dm Am G7
5 of 9 stay open
Fret 3
E Emaj7 A F#m B B7 C#m Abm F#7
4 of 9 stay open
Fret 4
Eb Ebmaj7 Ab Fm Bb Bb7 Cm Gm F7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
D Dmaj7 G Em A A7 Bm F#m E7
6 of 9 stay open
Fret 6
C# C#maj7 F# Ebm Ab Ab7 Bbm Fm Eb7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
C Cmaj7 F Dm G G7 Am Em D7
8 of 9 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 Lyin' Eyes clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More intermediate songs to learn after this one: Hotel California, Hey Jude, Blackbird, Nothing Else Matters.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Lyin' Eyes 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×.
3bars of this chord across the songbook
1songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 3×.
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×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
44bars of this chord across the songbook
12songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 20×.
113bars of this chord across the songbook
30songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.
53bars of this chord across the songbook
11songs use this shape
Most often followed by A, 12×.
47bars of this chord across the songbook
14songs use this shape
Most often followed by Dm7, 10×.