Adele
Someone Like You chords
Someone Like You by Adele is a beginner song in A, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 5 chords (A, C#m, F#m, D, E) across 2 sections: Verse ×2 → Chorus ×2. 3 of the 5 shapes are open chords and C#m is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 67 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: C#m → F#m, once.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerbarre shape C#m
- Key
- Awith no capo
- Tempo
- 67BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 53 open, 2 with a barre
- Sections
- 2each with its own progression
Chords in Someone Like You
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 →
Verse× 2 · ♩=67
Chorus× 2 · ♩=67
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Someone Like You
Someone Like You is a piano ballad that works shockingly well on guitar: the whole song is four chords — A, C#m, F#m and D — cycling like a slow heartbeat under one of the biggest vocal melodies of the 2010s.
The verse moves A → C#m → F#m → D, and the chorus simply swaps the C#m for an E, which brightens the harmony exactly where the melody soars. The two barre chords, C#m and F#m, share the same shape at frets 4 and 2, so learning one teaches you the other.
Strum gently in half-time — a soft downstroke per beat, letting the bass notes lead. If the barre chords buzz, play them with just the top four strings until your index finger builds strength. The song rewards restraint: quiet verses, a full but unhurried chorus, and lots of space.
How to practise Someone Like You
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
A (x-0-2-2-2-0, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → E (0-2-2-1-0-0, beginner) → C#m (x-4-6-6-5-4, intermediate, needs a barre) → F#m (2-4-4-2-2-2, intermediate, needs a barre)
3 of the 5 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave C#m until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
F#m → D2×A → C#m1×A → E1×C#m → F#m1×
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
- Aevery section
- C#mVerse
- F#mevery section
- Devery section
- EChorus
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 40 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 40 → 50 → 60 → 67 BPM. The recorded feel is around 67 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 60 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 Someone Like You 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
A C#m F#m D E
3 of 5 stay open
Fret 1
Ab Cm Fm C# Eb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
G Bm Em C D
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 3
F# Bbm Ebm B C#
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 4
F Am Dm Bb C
3 of 5 stay open
Fret 5
E Abm C#m A B
2 of 5 stay open
Fret 6
Eb Gm Cm Ab Bb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
D F#m Bm G A
3 of 5 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 Someone Like You 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 Someone Like You 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.
120bars of this chord across the songbook
20songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 24×.
1bars of this chord across the songbook
1songs use this shape
Most often followed by F#m, 1×.
9bars of this chord across the songbook
3songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 4×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
64bars of this chord across the songbook
9songs use this shape
Most often followed by Eadd9, 6×.