It’s in Raining Men’s signature chorus, Spirited Away (One Summer’s Day), Bleach (Life – Yui), Whitney Houston (Didn’t We Almost Have It All), Sia (Titanium), and you even hear it when you get Rickrolled. The IV△7–V7–iii7–vi chord progression, aka the koakuma chord progression, aka Ōdō shinkō, the Royal Road Chord Progression is one of the most popular and used progressions in Japanese contemporary music, spanning music, anime, and even video games. it’s in It is heard in countless songs across the world, but is overwhelmingly popular in Japanese songs in particular. The progression is so popular, the term Royal Road was coined to denote just how easy it is to make, and make sound good (and emotional). Eventually, this became so connected to Japanese contemporary music, pop songs without it were often criticized of not sounding “Japanese enough” for their audience.
It turns out, a TON of video game music (frankly, largely coming from Japan) has this progression somewhere. In this posteus, I’ll just be including songs with this progression. I’ve been saving this one for some time to get a juicy list of ten out – you may hear some classics.
huesteus 