Traditional
You Are My Sunshine chords
You Are My Sunshine by Traditional is a beginner song in C, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 5 chords (C, C7, F, Fadd9, G7) across 3 sections: Verse → Chorus → Outro. 4 of the 5 shapes are open chords and F is the one that needs a barre. It sits at roughly 96 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: F → C, 4 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerbarre shape F
- Key
- Cwith no capo
- Tempo
- 96BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 54 open, 1 with a barre
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in You Are My Sunshine
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♩=96
Chorus♩=96
Outro♩=96
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play You Are My Sunshine
Five chords, all open, but the song does not survive being strummed mindlessly. The verse turnaround is C to C7 to F, and C7 is the hinge: it is an open C shape with the little finger added on the G string at the 3rd fret. Do not lift the whole hand for it. Keep the index, middle and ring fingers exactly where they are, drop the little finger for one beat, then take it off as you move to F.
The chorus move is Fadd9 rather than a plain barre F. Fadd9 keeps the top two strings open and needs only your index finger on the B string and your middle finger on the G string, so beginners can play it cleanly on the first attempt. That is why this song is a better first F chord than anything with a full barre. Practise C to Fadd9 to C and back, four beats each, until the two open top strings ring through both chords.
G7 pulls the whole song home. Play it in the four-finger version if you can, so the bass note sits on the low E string at the 3rd fret, and make sure the F note on the high E string at the 1st fret speaks. In the last line of the chorus the progression walks F to C to G7 to C, and the G7 wants to arrive a fraction before the beat, pushing the resolution forward.
The last line of every verse is where the song is won or lost: F to C to G7 to C is four chords in four bars, and the G7 has to land slightly before the beat so the final C arrives on time. Play the G7 in the four-finger version if you can, so the bass note sits on the low E string at the 3rd fret, and make sure the F note on the high E string at the 1st fret speaks. If the change feels rushed, drop the F and play C to G7 to C — nobody in the room will notice, and a clean three-chord ending beats a fumbled four-chord one.
Set the metronome to 80 and play the Verse progression eight times through with a bass-note-then-strum pattern: thumb on the root, fingers on the chord. Then add the Chorus, keeping your right hand completely even. Add speed only when the little finger on C7 stops hesitating, which is the single most common reason a campfire version of this song falls apart.
How to practise You Are My Sunshine
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
C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → C7 (x-3-2-3-1-0, beginner) → Fadd9 (x-x-3-2-1-3, beginner) → G7 (3-2-0-0-0-1, beginner) → F (1-3-3-2-1-1, intermediate, needs a barre)
4 of the 5 shapes are open chords, so start there and leave F until the others change cleanly.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
C → G74×F → C4×C → F2×G7 → C2×
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
- Cevery section
- C7Verse
- Fevery section
- Fadd9Chorus
- G7every section
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 58 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 58 → 72 → 86 → 96 BPM. The recorded feel is around 96 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 86 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 You Are My Sunshine 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
C C7 F Fadd9 G7
4 of 5 stay open
Fret 1
B B7 E Eadd9 F#7
3 of 5 stay open
Fret 3
A A7 D Dadd9 E7
5 of 5 stay open
Fret 5
G G7 C Cadd9 D7
5 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 You Are My Sunshine 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 You Are My Sunshine 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.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
9bars of this chord across the songbook
5songs use this shape
Most often followed by F, 6×.
106bars of this chord across the songbook
24songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 31×.
4bars of this chord across the songbook
2songs use this shape
Most often followed by E, 3×.
33bars of this chord across the songbook
13songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 11×.