The Cranberries
Zombie chords
Zombie by The Cranberries is a beginner song in Em, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 4 chords (Em, C, G, D) across 3 sections: Intro → Verse ×2 → Chorus. Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength. It sits at roughly 84 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: C → G, 4 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerno barre needed
- Key
- Emwith no capo
- Tempo
- 84BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 4all open shapes
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in Zombie
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♩=84
Verse× 2 · ♩=84
Chorus♩=84
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Zombie
Zombie is one of the great beginner songs that does not sound like one: four open chords, no barre, no capo, and a chord loop that never moves. Em, C, G and D repeat for the entire verse, the chorus and the intro, so you learn forty seconds of playing and you have the whole song. What makes it work is the dynamics, not the harmony.
The famous sound is two downstrokes per chord with the whole hand laid back over the strings between them, so each chord is a punch rather than a ring. Keep your strumming wrist stiff and let the forearm do the hitting. The Em to C change is where beginners lose time: keep your index finger on the B string at fret 1 and move the middle and ring fingers together, and the change costs you almost nothing.
Practice it at 65 BPM with the gaps between hits deliberately even, because the temptation is always to rush the muted strokes and turn the song into a blur. Loop the four chords for five minutes with a metronome, then add the chorus and let it open up noticeably louder than the verse. Only raise the tempo once every muted stroke lands on the click, and play it standing up before you take it to a band - the dynamics, not the note choices, are what this song is made of.
How to practise Zombie
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
Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner)
4 of the 4 shapes are open chords, so nothing here needs barre strength yet.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
C → G4×Em → C4×G → D4×
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
- Emevery section
- Cevery section
- Gevery section
- Devery section
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 50 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 50 → 63 → 76 → 84 BPM. The recorded feel is around 84 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 76 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 Zombie 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
Em C G D
4 of 4 stay open
Fret 1
Ebm B F# C#
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
Dm Bb F C
2 of 4 stay open
Fret 3
C#m A E B
2 of 4 stay open
Fret 4
Cm Ab Eb Bb
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
Bm G D A
3 of 4 stay open
Fret 6
Bbm F# C# Ab
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
Am F C G
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 Zombie 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 Zombie 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.
113bars of this chord across the songbook
30songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.