Janis Joplin
Me and Bobby McGee chords
Me and Bobby McGee by Janis Joplin is a beginner song in Bb, played with a capo on fret 3. The whole sheet is 4 chords (G, C, D7, G7) across 3 sections: Intro → Verse → Chorus. Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: C → G, 3 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerno barre needed
- Key
- Bbwith a capo on fret 3
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 4all open shapes
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in Me and Bobby McGee
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♩=90
Verse♩=90
Chorus♩=90
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Me and Bobby McGee
Capo on the third fret and four shapes — G, C, D7 and G7 — will play the whole song, which is why this is one of the first songs people learn to sing and strum at the same time. The record sits in Bb, so the capo is what makes your open G shapes match it; take the capo off and you can sing it in G instead. The verse is a lazy four-bar walk that keeps returning to G, and the chorus uses the same materials in a different order, with C taking the lead.
The two seventh chords are the whole flavour of the arrangement. The G7 in the verse is a one-finger change from G — lift the ring finger off the top E string and the chord becomes a G7, which pushes the music towards the C. The D7 does the opposite: it pulls back home to G. Play both with a light touch and let the open strings ring; a clipped D7 kills the bluesy swing. If you have never used a seventh chord before, this is the friendliest introduction you will find.
Practise at 80 BPM, four beats per chord, and count out loud so the D7 lands on the first beat of its bar rather than a beat late. When the verse and chorus are comfortable, try singing while you play: the chord changes line up with the ends of phrases, which gives you a clear cue. The final verse of the record lifts a whole step, so if you want to follow it, move everything up two frets and keep the same shapes.
How to practise Me and Bobby McGee
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) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → D7 (x-x-0-2-1-2, beginner) → G7 (3-2-0-0-0-1, beginner)
4 of the 4 shapes are open chords, so nothing here needs barre strength yet.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
C → G3×D7 → G3×G → C1×G → D71×
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
- Cevery section
- D7Verse, Chorus
- G7Verse
Climb the tempo ladder
This sheet does not list a tempo, so pick one where every change is clean and use the metronome to move up in 4 BPM steps.
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 Me and Bobby McGee 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 Eb F7 Bb7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 1
A D E7 A7
4 of 4 stay open
Fret 2
Ab C# Eb7 Ab7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 3as written
G C D7 G7
4 of 4 stay open
Fret 4
F# B C#7 F#7
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
F Bb C7 F7
1 of 4 stay open
Fret 6
E A B7 E7
4 of 4 stay open
Fret 7
Eb Ab Bb7 Eb7
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 Me and Bobby McGee 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 Me and Bobby McGee 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×.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
44bars of this chord across the songbook
12songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 20×.
33bars of this chord across the songbook
13songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 11×.