This is an unforgettable pop song from everyone’s favorite battering ram, Justin Bieber. Oft revered, oft reviled, this popular culture icon has scarcely spent a second out of the spotlight since he was abruptly thrust into it at the pubescent age that he was, and with songs like this it isn’t hard to tell, so brimming with thought and wisdom and songwriting chops as the Love Yourself uke chords are.
In this heartfelt and soulful tune, there are unexpected chord variations for the verse giving the song its signature sound and the qualities that render it instantly recognizable in the canon of Justin Bieber’s oeuvre and beyond. With a subtle strumming pattern and a hand slap, we can easily create a percussive rhythm that carries the song’s melody. By the time we reach the chorus, the same chords are found but with the variation needed to create a fuller sound.
And just like that, a song is born, and maybe even a star if you play your cards right! The laid-back and relatively minimal instrumentation of the original renders this particular tune ripe for adopting as a cover, especially on an instrument such as a ukulele which provides an ample bed upon which to lay the veritable wisdom outlined in the song’s lyrics.
The Story of Love Yourself
‘Love Yourself’ is a song recorded by Canadian singer and songwriter Justin Bieber for his fourth studio album Purpose, released in the same year 2015. The song was released as a promotional single on 9th November 2015, and as the album’s third official single on 7th December 2015. It was written by the songwriting team of Ed Sheeran, Benjamin Levin, and Bieber, and produced by Levin himself.
Though at its heart it is a pop song, ‘Love Yourself’ features an electric guitar and a brief flurry of trumpets as its main instrumentation, minimalism that provides an ample venue for Love Yourself uke chords. During the song, Bieber uses a husky tone in the lower registers, typical of his attempts later in his career to distance himself from the young teen at the helm of his previous endeavors and public appearance mishaps. Lyrically, the song is a kiss-off to a narcissistic ex-lover who did the protagonist wrong.
When talking to Ryan Seacrest during the premiering of the single on Beats 1, Bieber said ‘Love Yourself’ is ‘definitely about someone in my past, someone who I don’t want to put on blast,’ going on to describe the song as ‘cool because so many people can resonate with that because how many women do we bring back that mom doesn’t really necessarily like?’
Ed Sheeran’s Involvement
On 29th September 2015, ahead of the release of the album, Justin Bieber announced in an interview with Australia’s Sunrise morning show that British singer and songwriter Ed Sheeran had written a song for his then-upcoming album, Purpose.
Later, during an interview for Capital FM, Bieber carefully revealed details about the song, saying: ‘It’s just me and a guitar. Basically, that’s how I started, playing on the street with a guitar.’ Adding about Sheeran, he said: ‘I think he’s one of the most talented writers in the game right now, so just to have his input and his stories and our stories and match them up together and say ‘What have you been through?’ and telling the same story.’
In another interview for the same radio network, he commented about the collaboration explicitly, stating: ‘It was a process. Just getting us together, you know, in the same room cause we did a lot of it separately. He is a good guy, super talented. Really good songwriter so just to be able to work with that caliber of songwriter was really, really awesome.’
In 2017, two years down the line, Ed Sheeran revealed that ‘Love Yourself’ was originally written for his album ÷. He said in this same interview that the track would have been scrapped had Bieber not taken the song kindly from Sheeran.
Composition of Love Yourself Uke Chords
As we have already firmly established, ‘Love Yourself’ was written by Ed Sheeran, Benny Blanco, and Justin Bieber, with production duties being assumed by Benny Blanco, funnily enough also responsible for the song’s instrumentation and programming. It features lyrical vocals by Bieber and subtle background vocals by Sheeran that do nothing more than accompany the central vocal part of Bieber.
According to the sheet music, and to my perfectly pitched ear holes, the song is composed in the key of E major with a moderate tempo of 100 beats per minute and a time signature firmly placed in 4/4, though since this is a mainstream pop song we ought not to expect anything different.
Bieber’s vocals range from the note of B2 to B3 – a mere octave – perhaps especially redolent of the intentionally simplistic, minimal, and mellow approach to this single among others on the record. It is an acoustic pop song, featuring just vocals and an electric guitar, and a brief flurry of trumpets, which was considered ‘the most subdued and least electronic of Bieber’s new tracks.’
This isn’t perhaps what many would class as an ‘acoustic’ pop song, many in fact being rather elitist about what is deemed acoustic and what is not. However, it cannot be argued that it is not minimal, the spare instrumentation only proving itself to be so at every occasion. All swells and crescendos are the results of vocal and production choices on the part of the songwriters, and thus can be easily attained on any instrument, from fingerstyle strumming to playing Love Yourself on ukulele, to nourish the soul aplenty through hard times.
The Lyrics for Love Yourself Uke Chords
Given that the entirety of the song can be played with just five chords, it would be pertinent to explore the lyrics in more detail, though before we go on the chords will be detailed below:
‘Love Yourself’ is what is termed a kiss-off – a rejection of someone in the field of romance – to a narcissistic ex-lover who did the protagonist wrong, with Bieber singing in an unenthused tone while criticizing a girl for loving herself too much, and presumably not him enough.
In the pre-chorus, Bieber sings the Love Yourself uke chords with a husky tone in the lower registers: ‘My mama don’t like you, and she likes everyone. And I [never] like to admit that I was wrong. And I’ve been so caught up in my job, didn’t see what’s going on, and now I know, I’m better sleeping on my own.’
In the chorus, Bieber sings the eponymous hook of the song, ‘Cause if you like the way you look that much, oh baby, you should go and love yourself. According to some sources, ‘love yourself is a stand-in for ‘go f**k yourself’ in this context, referencing without referencing the very limited availability to express oneself in the pop mainstream. This was confirmed when in 2017 composer Ed Sheeran stated that he had Rihanna in mind for the song at first, and the original lyric was indeed ‘fuck yourself. Anyway, it sounds good!
The Actual Lyrics to Sing Along to
For all the times that you rain on my parade
And all the clubs you get in using my name
You think you broke my heart, oh girl for goodness sake
You think I’m crying on my own, well I ain’t
And I didn’t wanna write a song
Cause I didn’t want anyone thinking I still care
I don’t but, you still hit my phone up
And baby I be movin’ on
And I think you should be somethin’
I don’t wanna hold back, maybe you should know that
My mama don’t like you and she likes everyone
And I never like to admit that I was wrong
And I’ve been so caught up in my job, didn’t see what’s going on
But now I know, I’m better sleeping on my own
Cause if you like the way you look that much
Oh, baby, you should go and love yourself
And if you think that I’m still holdin’ on to somethin’
You should go and love yourself
And when you told me that you hated my friends
The only problem was with you and not them
And every time you told me my opinion was wrong
And tried to make me forget where I came from
And I didn’t wanna write a song
Cause I didn’t want anyone thinking I still care
I don’t but, you still hit my phone up
And baby I be movin’ on
And I think you should be somethin’
I don’t wanna hold back, maybe you should know that
My mama don’t like you and she likes everyone
And I never like to admit that I was wrong
And I’ve been so caught up in my job, didn’t see what’s going on
But now I know, I’m better sleeping on my own
Cause if you like the way you look that much
Oh, baby, you should go and love yourself
And if you think that I’m still holdin’ on to somethin’
You should go and love yourself
For all the times that you made me feel small
I fell in love, now I feel nothin’ at all
Had never felt so low when I was vulnerable
Was I a fool to let you break down my walls?
Cause if you like the way you look that much
Oh, baby, you should go and love yourself
And if you think that I’m still holdin’ on to somethin’
You should go and love yourself
Cause if you like the way you look that much
Oh, baby, you should go and love yourself
And if you think that I’m still holdin’ on to somethin’
You should go and love yourself
Final Tones
So, there you have it, the odyssey that is Love Yourself, written by the songwriting powerhouse of Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber. I hope that if you weren’t already any the wiser about this wonderful song that you are clued in and ready to navigate the Justin Bieber Love Yourself in ukulele chords as well as the social and personal history of the song as it bloomed from the hearts and souls of the two songwriters in question.
FAQs Love Yourself Uke Chords
This, like many parts of learning an instrument as freeing and democratizing as the ukulele or guitar, is likely to vary wildly from person to person. What might be challenging to some will undoubtedly be relatively simple for others, and what may in fact be simple for some will no doubt be rather complicated and radical for others, and so on. Typically the Bb is a crux of a chord for the ukulele, one of the first in which all four fingers are engaged in fretting a string to sound out a note, requiring that each is placed perfectly in order for the sound to resonate as it should. This is a particularly difficult chord for those with arthritis or carpal tunnel syndrome or the like. Inversely, this can be an easy chord for other demographics, and so on and so forth.
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